TESTED - Loader Capacity VS. Height

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 go through and 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 a lot 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 is 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 a lot 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 as sales guys like to see used because it's going to tell you that 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 that you could probably 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 be able to pick something up off the ground and carry it a little ways and set it back down again, you can really push a lot 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 little 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 actually 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 that you're going to get out of your loader changes. A common measurement point that 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% or so 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 too 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 have parts or service needs for a machine you've already got, give us a call at Messick's. We're available at 8002223373. We are online at messicks.com