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Backhoe Mounted On Combine/Truck Frame
Roger Lindbeck lives in the Minnesota north country where he has a timber lot and hobby farm. Although his tractor, loader, and blade are sufficient for many jobs around his place, Lindbeck needed a backhoe and wasn’t about to shell out big dollars to buy one.
    “My neighbor Willard Pearson stripped down an old self-propelled Case combine and used it as the chassis for a homemade loader tractor. He had the loader facing the rear when I bought it from him. I removed the loader, did some rebuilding, and put together a frame to support an old Ware backhoe. The assembly mounts to the rear of the old combine frame, which rides on 26-in. wheels and holds the combine transmission. The front of the frame is mated with the engine and steering wheels from a 1 1/2-ton Ford truck. The 6-cyl. Ford engine has plenty of power to run the backhoe and drive it down the road at a good clip,” Lindbeck says.
    Lindbeck’s hybrid machine, which might be called a ‘truckbinehoe,’ was just what he needed to dismantle pesky beaver dams, repair road culverts, uproot tree stumps and load rocks. To run the backhoe, Lindbeck shifts the combine rear end into neutral. A 540 rpm spline stub shaft out of the Ford’s 3-speed transmission drives the hydraulic pump. He says the hydraulics have plenty of power to handle the 16-ft. backhoe arm and 24-in. bucket, which was originally made for a 450 Caterpillar. Outriggers balance the frame and keep it stable for heavy lifting.
    Lindbeck put an orbit motor and power steering on his rig so it’s easier to handle driving on the road. “People look twice when they see this on the road because it looks like a backhoe heading backward. If he works in extremely wet conditions he has a set of duals from another old combine that he can mount on the rear wheels.
    Lindbeck says, “It’s a tight machine, and if something happens to the engine and the drive train, the backhoe can be removed, and it’s still worth something. It sure does the work I need it for, and for a lot less money than buying a used backhoe.”
     Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Roger Lindbeck, 8203 Johnson Road, Cook, Minn. 55723 (ph 218-666-2197).


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2016 - Volume #40, Issue #2