Bale Froklift Built Out Of Junked Combine

Bale Froklift Built Out Of Junked Combine COMBINES Conversions 21-4-8 Until last year, Terry Glasheen and his son Jason had to push big bales off delivery trucks manually. Now, the Oshkosh, Wis., inventors use a forklift built out of a combine to handle 800-lb. big round bales. "You can't turn as sharp as you can with a conventional forklift, but it moves a lot quicker," Glasheen says. "And it sure beats throwing bales off a truck by hand." He started with a junked 1950's Massey Harris 35 combine equipped with a 4-cyl. Continental engine that no longer ran. He located replacement parts for the engine - a governor and timing gear - by advertising in a newspaper. He stripped the combine down to the subframe and built a new 10 by 4-ft. rectangular frame out of 3 by 5-in. tubing. On front of it, he mounted the mast off a 1969 Moto-Truc electric forklift. The mast has a 14-ft. reach and 3-ft. forks. It mounts 18 in. out in front of the axle so Glasheen didn't have to reposition the operator's platform. He drives the lift off the combine's original hydraulic system, which simply required moving the lift's hydraulic line spool from the left to the right side of the mast so it wouldn't obstruct the operator's vision. He used the battery pack out of the forklift as part of a 2,500-lb. counterweight at the rear of the machine. "I had to cut the battery pack down from 1,600 to 1,300 lbs. to make it fit in the frame," he says. "Thirteen hundred pounds wasn't enough to counterbalance the forklift so I filled the combine hood with 1,200 lbs. of concrete and mounted it on the rear too. That did the trick." Besides being a slick bale mover, Glasheen says the forklift comes in handy for many other jobs as well. Out-of-pocket expense was $460, including $50 for the combine and $75 for engine replacement parts. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Terry Glasheen, 7540 Romberg Rd., Oshkosh, Wis. 54904 (ph 414 836-2303).

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