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"Easy On" Forklift For Deere Garden Tractor
William Gorge, White Marsh, Md., needed a forklift on his small acreage. So, he built one to go on front of his 1995 Deere 330 23 hp garden tractor. It mounts on a Deere snowplow mounting bracket already on the tractor.
    “It’s as easy to install as the snowplow and takes less than 5 min. without any tools,” says Gorge. “It attaches with two steel pins and a couple hooks at the bottom. I didn’t have to make any modifications to the tractor or the snowplow mounting brackets at all. In fact, I don’t know why Deere doesn’t make a forklift for their garden tractors to go with their snowplow mounting bracket. I think it would sell like hotcakes.”
    He says he uses the forklift a lot to haul everything from bags of wood pellets and concrete to engines. “It’ll lift up to 43 in. high and can handle loads up to 500 lbs., although I do need wheel weights when I lift that much. I had been using a bigger self-propelled forklift, but I go on the road a lot and it was a hassle hauling it around on trailers,” he says.
    He used 1/2-in. thick by 3-in. wide flat stock to make the forks, which are attached to a carriage and raised up or down by a hydraulic cylinder. The carriage rolls on masts that he made from 2 1/2-in. mechanical tubing and is connected by motorcycle chain to the cylinder. The masts are welded to the snowplow mounting bracket, which consists of a 1/4-in. thick steel plate that slides onto the tractor.
    “The tractor originally came with a belly-mounted mower deck, and my forklift uses the same hydraulic system that raised and lowered it,” says Gorge. “I also added a small hydraulic pump on a homemade bracket that bolts on between the masts. The tractor came with two quick disconnects for hydraulic hose on front, and the hydraulic cylinder plugs into them.
    “The forks have slots cut into them on top and can be manually slid out on the carriage up to 18 in. apart.”
    Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, William J. Gorge, 5730 Allender Rd., White Marsh, Md. 21162 (ph 410 256-5671).


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2013 - Volume #37, Issue #4