[music]
Neil from Messick's here, out today with the Kubota LA 434 front-loader.
Today we're going to do a little bit of load cell testing
down in our test pit.
I've got here buried about 10 feet underground
a tire with a chain attached to it
and a loader cell between my loader
and that chain going down underground.
I'm going to do a couple of demonstrations
here for you today showing how lift, height, and the positioning
on your loader bucket impacts your lift capacity.
One of the things that I really frequently get frustrated by
is the way that a lot of tractor companies
present the specifications of their product.
Oftentimes, you're going to find some companies
giving you a lot of detail
more honest companies, giving you a lot of detail
on exactly where they're taking their measurements,
the height, how high up, and how far forward
on the loader they're recording those specs.
The less honest ones that want to make themselves
seem like a little bit more than they are
are going to be very coy
about exactly how they're taking those numbers.
By coming back closer to the loader
and lower down to the ground, you're going to lift more weight.
If you're trying to put on a good face
and make a good marketing material,
that's a very easy way to do it,
it's just by not showing the full picture.
I'm going to show you a little bit here today
just by moving around the point
that my load cell is attached and running up
to different heights of how we can come up
with some radically different numbers.
Now, just like lifting something yourself,
the lower that you are the ground
and the closer that you are to your body,
the much easier that it is, right?
If you're going to try to lift something up above your head,
it's going to be more difficult than lifting it up to your knees.
We're going to do the knees test here at first.
I've got the loader lowered down to the ground
and I got my load cell hooked back
behind my bucket where the pivot pins are
at right about knee height
which should give us a very, very strong lift.
The very conservative number for this loader
is right about 660 pounds.
That's the conservative number that we sales guys like to see used.
It's going to tell you you should be able
to put 660 pounds just about anywhere.
To full height, into a dump truck or whatever,
but this number is going to show a heck of a lot more than that.
[engine revving]
Look at that.
My loader just lifted 1,778 pounds.
How about yours? Right?
A very good example right there,
so knee or basically waist height at this point
now that I've pulled the slack out of the chain, right?
If we were going to drop this down even further,
it's pretty safe to say
you could get a 2000 pound measurement
out of this tractor.
That's going to show you that when you are lifting loads around--
If you only need to pick something up off the ground
and carry it a little ways and set it back down again,
you can push more with these tractors than what you would expect,
but as you're going to see here as we move this thing up forward,
higher and higher, those numbers are going to start to decrease.
You can see here by the dogleg here that's in the loader arm
that dog leg is going to be pointed basically out
by 90 degrees here in the next test.
That one's going to taken right about five feet.
If you look at your loader literature,
this is actually a number that is oftentimes published.
This one will be 1500 millimeters off the ground,
which is just shy of 60 inches from the pivot pin.
[engine revving]
I'm coming in at 1200 pounds, a full 30% lower
than what we were doing just two feet below.
You can see here how that loader geometry plays out.
As that bucket moves away from the tractor.
Your lift capacity starts to dive off really quickly.
Our last test here is going to be at full height.
That is typically a spec sheet number.
This is going to be your lift capacity at full height
at the pivot pin.
Now, you can see here as I'm chaining this thing up,
full height on this loader is high.
This is a relatively small tractor
and for the most part,
for most guys probably has no need to lift as high.
If I was a less than honest tractor manufacturer
and I wanted to show
a really high lift capacity number on my machines,
I simply would look at changing my loader geometry
to not lift quite as high because then I'm going to come up with
this higher lift capacity number
and a lot of guys are never really going to notice
just by changing how that geometry works out.
Keep that in mind.
These are numbers that depending on
your marketing honesty, let's call it that way,
you can really easily manipulate.
[engine revving]
Lift capacity at full height at the pivot pin
comes in at 1,043 pounds.
Now, that's approximately about 10% or so
over what's used on the specification sheet.
You're always going to see some amount of variation
in these tractors based upon their hydraulic pressure.
This one we did not test,
so I don't know exactly where it falls in the range,
but you want to know that there is probably about a 10% margin of error
in all of these numbers and most tractors rolling out of the factory
because there's always going to be a bit of that variation
in the tractor's hydraulic relief pressure.
We're going to come out here, do a measurement of bucket center.
Bucket center is a common measurement that we generally look
to be able to tell a guy here's the kind of weight
that you're going to be able to put in the bucket, right?
As we've been talking,
as loads move up or down or front or back,
the amount of capacity you're going to get out of your loader changes.
A common measurement point you're going to find on your spec sheet
is called 500 millimeters forward,
or what we generally will refer to as bucket center.
Now, the fun thing about this particular bucket
is that if you go back here to where the pivot pin is
and you come out 500 millimeters
or basically right about 20 inches,
we're out here
nearly about six inches from the end of the bucket,
not actually at bucket center.
The conservative numbers that we generally use
are even more conservative, actually,
because we're using that conservative number
out here near the end of the lip
and not, actually, back here at a true bucket center.
For this test, I'm going for the true bucket center.
I've wrapped the chain around the top of the bucket here
so that I can attach my load cell down here underneath the middle,
the flat part of the bucket.
[engine revving]
Our knee-high measurement here,
at basically bucket center, comes out at 1,224 pounds.
Interestingly here for diving into this spec sheet,
you reasonably can get a full bucket of material
up to a carrying height
that is nearly double the rated lift capacity of the loader.
Our load is starting to go forward a little bit
but we're not the whole way front
on the dog leg in the loader yet.
[engine revving]
The last test is going to be what should be our worst-case scenario,
essentially full height at bucket center.
[engine revving]
It finished right there, right about 649 pounds
at essentially full height buckets center.
Now, that's really within our give or take 10% margin of error
that I would expect to see in this.
I am quite obviously a guy in a field
with a chain and a load cell and not consumer reports.
Interesting conversation that we could show here
how loader specifications are rated.
Oftentimes, why you're going to get a real sense
that certain machines are able to far outperform their specification,
and telling you a little bit about how to interpret these numbers
and which ones to look for
when you're going through a tractor spec sheet.
If you're going through the buying process
on a piece of equipment, we can help.
You've parts or service needs for a machine you've got,
give us a call at Messick's.
We're available at 8002223373.
We are online at messicks.com.
[engine revving]
Not very exciting either to me.
This was really frustrating.
I broke a microphone.
My load cell battery messed up.
It took me forever to get this chain set up. [laughs]
This one took some work.