Jim Lippert wanted a skid steer loader to clean up around his cattle barn, but the Chepstow, Ont., farmer couldn't justify the price of either a new or used machine.

So he took a look at an old Owatonna he owned. It had a variable speed belt drive swather with a 20 HP 2-cylinder Wisconsin engine. He decided he could build a skid steer if he had a matching axle from another Owatonna swather. He managed to find one for sale and then got down to work.

He stripped everything off the first swather except the powered axle, wheels, and planetary drive and just took the axle and wheels off the second swather. "I narrowed the axles down as much as I could, to about 60 in. from the outside of one wheel to the outside of the opposite one. That's a little wider than most skid steers, but narrow enough to go everywhere I need to use it," he says.

Lippert built a frame of 2 by 4 by 1/4-in. thick steel and attached the axles, planetary drive, and engine. He had to rebuild the planetary drive. "The bands and clutches were worn out in it," he says. He also had to rebuild the engine.

He built his own bucket for the loader, and made lift arms for it from an old IH front-end loader. To raise and lower the arms, he found a small hydraulic pump from a Deere tractor that had its own reservoir. He calculated the fluid needs of the 36-in. stroke cylinders on the loader and decided the reservoir wasn't big enough. "I had to enlarge it a little, so it would hold a couple of gallons of fluid," he says.

He built his own bucket for the loader, and made lift arms for it from an old IH front-end loader. To raise and lower the arms, he found a small hydraulic pump from a Deere tractor that had its own reservoir. He calculated the fluid needs of the 36-in. stroke cylinders on the loader and decided the reservoir wasn't big enough. "I had to enlarge it a little, so it would hold a couple of gallons of fluid," he says.

He salvaged the lift cylinders from the swather header to tilt the bucket itself. "They were one-way cylinders with about a 12 in. stroke. I converted them to two-way so I'd have more control over the bucket," he says.

He made hand levers to steer the loader. The swathers used a lever to engage the variable belt drive. With his hands on the steering levers, using another lever to engage the drive was a little awkward. So Lippert put a thumb switch on one lever and wired it to a variable speed windshield wiper motor, which he hooked up to control the belt drive. With the thumb switch, he can engage or disengage the drive.

Since his hands were going to be busy steering the machine, he made foot controls for the bucket and the loader arms. To make these, he salvaged the controls and valves from an old forklift mast.

Lippert's skid steer has been more than a year in the making. In fact, he's still making changes. "I just recently made a couple of smaller sprockets for the drive to give it more torque and less speed," he says.

Lippert teaches automotive technology at a local high school. Some of the work on the loader was done by students.