Questions RE Converting L681 Loader to SSQA

[Mr Haney]

Today I got the ears off the old bucket. I am still not done grinding the vestiges of the ears flat. What a nasty job. I have a propane cutting outfit, but I never tried to use it until yesterday. Turns out it takes something I can't buy on Amazon: skill.

I ended up firing up the plasma cutter, but it drove the molten metal into the cuts where it solidified and pretty much re-welded the steel. I had to use plasma, a big Metabo grinder, and some big Mayhew prybars just to get to the grinding stage.

I think the intelligent thing would have been to cut rectangular holes around the ears and drop them out completely. That would have taken 20 minutes. I could have patched the holes in the bucket and gone on my merry way.

I figure I have several more hours of grinding just to get this thing ready for the mount.

Man, I wish Everything Attachments had had a bucket in stock.

 

[Mr Haney]

Here is where I am now. I cut the middle out of the plate. I had to cut the angle iron support on the bucket down to 25" to fit between the mount plates. There was a ton of rust and scale under the angle iron and the old ears, but fortunately, not much of it was in the areas where I'll have to weld.

It looks like I'll lose a couple of degrees of bucket rotation, but I can't think of a time when I have felt I needed every available degree. I could make some supports to increase the angle, but it seems like a waste of time.

I plan to paint the areas where the old paint was destroyed, but I am too tired to paint the whole bucket. I feel like I've been running angle grinders for a year.

I want to put the plates on the FEL, lower it to the bucket, and tack them in place. Then I can back the tractor out and weld them. I can't do it right now because I have a hydraulic leak, and I don't want to move the tractor until I fill up the reservoir.

After this, I get to chase down the leak!

 

[Mr Haney]

Here is the final product. I wish I could have just bought a bucket, but you do what you have to.