2017 - Volume #BFS, Issue #17, Page #07
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“Made It Myself” Garden Tractor Loader
“When I first started building it, I figured I was making myself a toy, but the loader has turned out to be handy for many jobs,” says Dennis Gintowt about the loader he built for his 1972 Deere 112 garden tractor. “The bucket holds a little more than you can get in a wheelbarrow so it’s like a motorized wheelbarrow.”
  With weights on back of the tractor, he can pick up as much as 500 lbs. with the loader. It’s handy for loading firewood in the pickup, spreading fertilizer, handling bark mulch, and scraping the driveway in winter.
  Gintowt started with plans for a Cub loader tractor he had purchased and modified them to fit his Deere. He used 2 by 2, 1/8-in. tubing for the arms and 4 by 4, 1/4-in. steel for the towers, one of which holds the hydraulic fluid. He built the bucket out of flat stock and estimates the whole thing weighs about 450 lbs.
He drilled holes on the tractor to bolt the loader on, but otherwise didn’t have to change anything on the tractor. With nearly 40 years of welding experience he had all the tools and skills necessary to build the loader, but it was his first time working with hydraulics. He lost some fluid in the process, but with trial and error and the help of a friend, he figured it out.
  It took Gintowt about a year to complete the loader, with a lot of time spent planning.
  “You don’t want to hurry the project,” he advises, noting he took his time planning important details such as placing the hydraulic pump so the wheels didn’t hit it, for example.
  After eight years of use, there is only one thing that would make it better.
  “I wish it was a 4-WD tractor for digging in the dirt,” he says. It easily handles loose dirt, but doesn’t have the traction for digging packed dirt.
  Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Dennis Gintowt, 68 Line St., Southampton, Mass. 01073 (ph 413 527-8699; dengin0551@verizon.net).


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2017 - Volume #BFS, Issue #17