I've been waiting for this episode. Glad to see it wheeling around and lifting finally! I'll be using this video series as inspiration for my own builds. How much have you lifted with it so far and what's the max lift height on it?
Thanks for your kind words. It's a great feeling to finally get the hydraulics sorted and get back on track to finishing it. I was really struggling for a while and had a few nagging doubts of whether I'd ever get it done.
The shame I would have faced to have all this confident build published on YouTube and then never finish it was a powerful motivator! I had to get it figured out so I don't look foolish to the whole world!
So far I've picked up around 300 lbs on the forks, with the weight distributed fully out to the front of the pallet. That puts a lot of leverage out in front of the forks' hinge point, and the rear tires got light enough with that load that I couldn't make it up the hill in the second video. They weren't up in the air at all, but they couldn't get traction on the damp grass. So I took off the frontmost 100lbs or so, and that was fine. So I'll most definitely need to build a counterweight, which I'll cover in either this next or one more final video. My design target is to be able to "breakout" lift 1000 lbs with the cutting lip of the bucket, so that's what will determine the size of the counterweight. It seems clear enough from here that the hydraulics would easily lift twice that amount, but the rest of the structure just isn't up to that strain. Once I've seen how 1000 lbs feels, I may just get brave and see how it does with about 1500. But not more than that.
As far as height goes, by my drawings the top face of the pallet should lift to around 83". But I couldn't very accurately draw/predict the exact interplay of the quick-tach adapter and the quick-tach implements. So I'll have to just raise it to full height and grab a tape measure to answer the question accurately. I suspect the top of the pallet may only go to 81 or 82 inches. But I'll update with real numbers in about a week, once I'm back home from my trip.
Bob
