New Mods to Loretta's 284 Jinma

That is one of those mods that I need to do someday. I like the position of the gauge. Do they offer a square framed one or would I need to fab up a custom bezel?

Another mod I would like is a tilt-meter.

Oh, since her Jinma has a Chinese loader, you might want to fab up some brackets and bolt on a rear loader tower cross brace. I have mine almost done and will test fit it soon.

The loader towers flex badly when I am running with a full bucket.

You must have missed the third one down on the list or I didn't make it clear.
That's one of the mods to do. Even with her smaller capacity, the loader bracket flexes a lot. I already bought the square tubing for part of it...1/4 wall a x 3 x 3 tubing. I have to figure out a good way to attach it to the rear plate. I'll share what I come up with when I start that mod.
Rob-

You can see the problem with moving the grapple forward is that now there will be even more pressure trying to pry the bucket open. I'm going to try gusseting the inside of the bucket. Along the back side of the bucket, where the top QA hooks are, there is a 1/4" thick plate about 6" wide that runs across the entire back. I figure if I make the inner gussets heavy duty enough, and if I can attach them to that back plate, then the entire top lip would be tied into the back of the bucket.

So here's my plan.
I got some old busted up scarifier shanks that are 3/4" thick x 2-1/2" wide. (I never threw them away) Then I sawed them into a shape to fit the inside of the bucket. I had to weld some pieces together to get the shape I wanted. What they do is attach to the underside of the grapple mounting plate, to the inside of the bucket top and also to the inside of the bucket back.



Burning the weld through to the back plate took a little more heat than I thought.
When I tried to pry the grapples backward, they were pretty stiff. Before when I did they I could feel the bucket flex. Now it's better. I think it should hold the back and top together now, but of course I will test it out first.
Rob-

Next thing I got started on was the Top and Tilt.
I ordered a 4 spool stack valve from Surplus center with power beyond. Of course they sent me the wrong outlet section so they are shipping me the power beyond sleeve. But here is the assembly of that new valve. You lay it down on the side with the tie rod bolts sticking up and place each section in the order you want. I got 3 sections that are spring loaded returning to center and one that is detented. Then you place the "O" rings between each section and torque it up to 150 inch pounds.

Last thing I wanted was to mount DPOCV's to those side link cylinders.
You might remember I bought a bunch of them from Mark at CCM for my other projects? Well, the problem is these are Metric. The tubing is Metric and the Banjo bolts are parallel BSP. The inlet and outlet on the valve body tapered BSP ... nice. I can get adapter fittings for that stuff, but the biggest problem is they are too long for the ports on the side link cylinders I bought. There is only so much room for adjustment by shortening threads and cutting of the banjo tubes before you get into the spring loaded check valve mechanism. The last photo shows the assembly at it's shortest vs the ports on the cylinders.
I will have to think what to do about this one a little.
Rob-

Interesting way to mount the 4-spool valve. I thought about something like that on mine but it would be too high. I see that her fenders are metal and are closer to the front dash than my CI fiberglass ones.

Re: the DPOCV's, how about this. In the pic where it is sitting by the cylinder ports, you could mount it to the side of the ports, then bend some hydraulic tubing in a series of tight 90 degree bends to get the banjo fittings to line up with the cylinder ports, possibly from the top and bottom directions. I have a bunch of shorter lengths of 1/2" seamless hydraulic tubing you can have to make the pieces then weld them to the banjos and other fittings if you like.

Off topic here but the puppies have turned my house in to the Daytona 500 while I am typing this post. ;D

Re: the bucket reinforcement, that is a slightly different way of what I mentioned when I realized I bent my bucket top. I remember seeing one of our member's tractor, possibly Flick, that had a vertical rib in the middle of the bucket. It was thin but ran along the back vertically from the top to the bottom. It was only about 3-4" deep and probably 1/4" thick. I was worried about material sticking in the bucket but I have that problem now without the brace so WTF? BTW, Since I welded the rear 1/2"x6"x30" brace along the rear-top of the bucket and along the top under the grapple brackets, I haven't seen the bending anymore.

The FEL brace I was talking about were not the axle braces. I made those sim. to Larry's Koyker braces out of 1/2"x2-1/2" flat bar and those BA 1/2" flat plate braces I welded to the rear lower FEL mounts and torque tube. I have made some 1/2" plate mounts to the rear of the FEL towers and am bending a 1-1/2"x.120 tube upper tie brace to tie the top of the FEL towers together. The towers flex like a MF when the thing is pushed hard with a full bucket or when transporting empty on the road. A lot of "other" tractors have this bolt on brace and I have designed mine so it won't interfere with raising the hood (famous last words).

Here are a couple of shots of the left tower with tapped holes and the brace mounting point mounted to the tower.




There is a mirror image mount behind my FEL valve bracket on the other side shown here.

Everything looks good Rob. The fallback on mounting those DPOCVs is to mount them in an intermediate location (hide them) and run hoses to the valves and to the cylinders.