Special delivery arch

[OneWithWood]

I ordered a T30 Logrite Tractor Arch recently.  Kevin and Tammy volunteered to bring it to me and save me some shipping becasue they were going to a show in Milwaukee and had a meeting with Woodmizer in Indianapolis following the show.  Indy is just up the road from me.

Delivery by special people
 



It was a cold and windy day so after we unloaded the arch, put the wheels on it and did the paperwork I gave them a brief tour of the place and we went to lunch at the local cracker barrel.  Linnea and I enjoyed spending a little time with Kevin and Tammy and I really appreciated their willingness to deliver the arch.  After lunch the Logrite crew was on their way to Ohio to make another delivery.  Sorry, but I neglected to take any pictures of the people in this story.  I was having too much fun talking.

I did take some pics of the arch the following day.

Here it is behind the JD4520.  Talk about a color clash 
 



and here is one of my expanded fetching family 
 



The brakes I ordered from Truckpartcity.com came in yesterday and I hope to find the time to install the brakes on the arch this weekend.  Then it will be time to get the arch dirty 

So once again I will be out of excuses to go fall some timber, saw up some boards and maybe even make some money. . .

[JV]

Well, if you're too busy to break it in, you could just drop it off at my place.  Not that far

north of you.   

[Maineloggerkid]

NIce looking rig ya got there. Keep us posted on how it works.

I have the JD 4120, how do you like the 4520?? Is it powershift or the eHydro?

I have the powershift, and with my fransgard winch, I usually pull 4-5 whole trees at a time no problem. ( spruce, fir, polpar, hardwood.)

[stonebroke]

how did you figure what brakes to use?

Stonebroke

[John Mc]

Here it is behind the JD4520.  Talk about a color clash 
 

(Image hidden from quote, click to view.)

Gee, I guess it's time to trade your JD4520 in for a New Holland tractor so the colors will match? Or, if the clash bothers you too much, feel free to send the arch out to me. It will match my NH tractor nicely (or close enough, anyway).

John Mc

[Maineloggerkid]

You could paint the arch green, get some decals, and then it would look like a real deere product

[OneWithWood]

Maineloggerkid,
I really like the 4520.  It has eHydro.  This is my first hydrostatic tranny and I really like it.
It is a real Logrite product so it will remain logrite blue.

Stonebroke,
Kevin supplied me with the part numbers.

JV,
I will make the time, thank-you.  Feel free to drop by and pet it anytime  

John Mc,
I am expanding my horizons and developing a taste for new color combos  

[beenthere]

Oww
Are they electric brakes? Interested in their installation.
Sure sounds like a great idea, and really useful on those ATV rigs for downhill runs.

The hydro tranny does give a whole new level of control, with hands free to steer and control hydraulics, be it loader or 3pt.   

Look forward to seeing some logs coming outta the woods now..  

[Maineloggerkid]

my problem with the ehydro is that now that I am used to the standard, I try to use the clutch and end up mashing the brakes all the time.

plus I like the hand throttle for various reasons.

[John Mc]

plus I like the hand throttle for various reasons.

I've never driven a JD4520, but every Hydro transmission tractor I've ever seen has a hand throttle.

The biggest thing I had to learn was not to treat the hydro pedal as a gas pedal. I've driven tractors since I was a kid, so I should be used to the idea that stepping on pedals doesn't mean more power. However, for some reason having a hydro pedal made my body think "car... step on the pedal when the engine starts to bog down", which is exactly what you don't want to do on a hydro. A couple of weeks of using the box blade for grading and creating drainage swales cured me of that problem.

John Mc

[Maineloggerkid]

the one I ran had a hand throttle, but because there are no gears, as soon a you let off the pedal, the tractor stops. Unless there is a "cruise control" that I'm not aware of.

[John Mc]

Mine has a "cruise control" of sorts... you push a button, and it holds the hydro setting at whatever it was when you pushed the button. You might slow down under load, and your speed will definitely change with throttle setting, but it does free up your foot.

My neighbor's JD 4710 has a similar feature.

(talk about topic drift... how did we get onto hydro operation from a thread about a logging arch?)

[beenthere]

John
The Deere ehydro won't let you push the forward pedal beyond the point of diminishing engine power. But I've the older hydro without that feature, and I had to learn the same as you - don't push down for more power when already using all the power of the engine. 

Don't know if that ehydro is exclusive to Deere or if the IH-NH also have it.

Also, the newer ehydro has an adjustable "slow down" feature when letting off the forward pedal. Mine will abruptly stop (which I like) and takes some getting used to. Some like to stop less abruptly, which I can see if someone is on a wagon or trailer, and don't want to be thrown off. 

Now, back to that arch. Looking forward to how the brakes hook up and to see the arch working. 

[loggjamm]

I'm thinking about the Mark 7 arch to bring logs into the building endways. Wondering if you can move logs by hand with an arch. Keep us posted.

[Jeff]

Yes you can move logs by hand with the Mark7, but within  some limits of course. On flat hard terrain you can move anything the arch can pick up using the t handle.  You can easily use it for moving logs around by hand on a saw site.

[CLL]

Don't trade the green for a New Holland, their junk. We had 3 new ones where I was farm manager(they got ford discount). We spent more time working on them, then using them.

[OneWithWood]

Yes, the brakes are electric.  I intend to mount a brake controller on the tractor so I can apply braking pressure as I need it on the downhill.  If I am not posting for a long time you know it didn't work   

My tractor has 'cruise control' and if you release the 'cruise' while your foot is on the pedal you can bring the rig to a stop gently.  Comes in handy if you have something on the forks or in the bucket.

the biggest thing I had to overcome with the eHydro was mashing the forward pedal when I wanted reverse and mashing the reverse pedal when I wanted forward.  Just a dyslexic operator.

[Don K]

OWW,  Sometime if you have a minute shoot some pics of your crawler and how you have it rigged. looks like you have some forks to interchange with the bucket. I am a dozer freak and love to look at them. If I was close as a kid and Grandaddy fired his up I was right there. I will own one as soon as the tractor is paid for.

Don

[OneWithWood]

Check out my image archive for some pics of the previous crawler.  The two are identicle in most respects.

[DanG]

That ugly little tractor would be right cute if ya painted it Logrite Blue.

ps: I started to say something about it being easy to find in the woods if it was blue, but from the looks of your woods, green would stand out pretty well too.

[Reddog]

I intend to mount a brake controller on the tractor so I can apply braking pressure as I need it on the downhill.

OWW,
You could also look for a sliding reostate. Then if you need to stop and hold on a hill you can leave the lever set to keep the brakes applied. The brake controller will not keep the brakes applied unless you have the lever held over.

[OneWithWood]

My original thought was a sliding reostat for just the reason you state.  I happen to have a couple of brake controllers from previous apps which is why I am leaning that way now.  I will do some more research on the availablility of 12v sliding reostats to see what is available.
Any suggestions?

[pineywoods]

OWW trying to use electric brakes for a parking brake ain't such a good idea. First off, if you leave them energized for more than a minute or 2 you gonna see smoke. The sliding rheostat in a brake controller won't handle more than about 1/4 amp, it controls some electronics which provides the 15-25 amps the brakes need. The brake mechanism doesn't use the solenoid to apply the brakes. It's just a sort of trigger that uses the rotation of the wheel to apply the brakes. In other words, standing still, you got no brakes untill the wheel turns at least 1/8 of a revolution.. Mounting a regular brake controller on the tractor...now that's a DanG good idea. I'm putting one on my Kubota cause I sometimes pull a flatbed trailer with a dozer on it.

[DanG]

I agree with Piney.  The electric brakes on the arch is a great idea, but the parking brake isn't.  To my way of thinking, if the tractor won't hold it with its parking brake set and the loader bucket grounded, you simply don't have a large enough tractor to do the job safely.  Don't let efficiency get in the way of safety!

[Reddog]

Well first if you are burning up electric brakes, you need to use heavier wire.
All you are doing is energizing a magnet on that circuit. The worst that should happen with leaving the brakes set is a dead battery.

Second is being able to adjust the brakes on a steep descent and not need a prehensile tail to hold the lever and drive at the same time.

I trust oww to use his 450 if the skidding is that steep.

[DanG]

I trust oww to use his 450 if the skidding is that steep.

Yeah, I'm sure that OWW would put the dozer to use if the situation called for it.  But at the same time, an awful lot of people read this forum, and most of them don't have the equipment or the experience that OWW has.  I can just picture some poor guy getting an arch and heading down the mountain with it behind his lawn mower.  "Hey, it's 20 horsepower, right?  I'm cool!"  I just think we owe it to the public to express all of our misgivings about these situations.  These are not Tinker Toys we're playing with.  If we can keep somebody from getting hurt, by speaking up about undersized equipment and oversized logs, we will have done a service.

[Maineloggerkid]

I agree with DanG, I have seen alot of people that aren't knowlegable in forestry attempt things that should have killed them, simply because they had no clue it could be completely wrong.

[OneWithWood]

I think I need to clarify a couple of things.  The brakes have been installed to slow or cause drag when traversing a down slope.  The brakes on the arch are in no way inteneded to be a parking brake.  If for some reason I need to stop on a down slope the bucket gets dug in, the tractor brake gets set and I block the wheels.

What I am attempting to accomplish is some measure of control traversing relatively steep slopes with a sizeable following load.  By being able to apply braking power to the arch in a measured manner I am hopeful I can create enough drag to keep from overpowering the tractor, or worse, lifting the tail of the tractor or pushing it sideways. 

I will be putting a controller on the 450 crawler for the same reasons. 

I could easily do all this with just the crawler by paying out cable and winching it in but I want to miimize rutting on the trails.  The more I can do with the tractor the better.  The tractor has IR treads and is much easier on the ground than the grouser cleats of the crawler.    The current game plan is to fall selected trees and winch them up to the trail using the crawler, buck to length and bring the butts out on the crawler forks then make however many runs with the tractor and the arch to bring out the uppers.  Anyway that is the current plan and as always is very subject to change.  One thing I have learned about the IR treads is that muddy surfaces tend to pack the tread and then it slides as on ice.  When the ground is frozen neither the crawler or the tractor are any good on the slopes.

[DanG]

Thanks for the clarification Robert.  I knew all along that you would be doing this right, but I could just envision some newbie getting into trouble with too much log and not enough tractor.

[stonebroke]

If the ground is frozen chains really help.

Stonebroke