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No, I do not have new recommendations. I addressed the Titan HD thumb on the prior page. It may be able to be modified to put the pins in shear rather than bending.
No offense taken. If you ever enjoyed playing with the crane game at a carnival, then put a thumb on a backhoe, you will want to pick up everything. Force multiplication is fun. Certainly if I were interested purely in efficiency, I wouldn’t have bought a FLU. I enjoy showing off a bit.
I try not to call things garbage. As an engineer, I understand customer's abilities to use a device well outside of the design intent. So maybe I am somehow using it improperly. Maybe the 32" thumb is the wrong product for the FLU. Certainly I modified it by cutting a chunk out so the bucket...
The 24” bucket is 24” wide. Measured frame the dipper arm to the edge of the bucket(not including teeth), it is 30 or 31” long off the top of my head. A 32” thumb will fit.
In addition to notching the thumb to clear the tooth, you would also need to add spacers to the crossbar so the pin is in shear rather than bending. See my second photo and Alpine’s post #7. I am still disappointed with the soft steel used to make the pins. I replaced them with hitch pins.
Without the backhoe bucket stowing properly, the Rt stabilizer wouldn't stow and stuck out quite far to the Right side. After being inattentive and clobbering a speed limit sign on the road, I decided I needed to fix it. I torched out about 5 inches of material in the center of the thumb so...
If you can’t get the bucket in far enough for the dipper to stow, you can’t store the backhoe. The transport latch is on the dipper, so if the dipper is not at the correct angle, the backhoe won’t fold down all the way, and certainly won’t latch.
I am not doing any good to criticize the design then not offer alternatives. Here is a thumb designed so you don’t have to unpin the crossbar to store the thumb: https://youtu.be/-E-Yz3bxMbI
With the thumb weighing close to 100 lbs, it is really annoying to have to hold everything up and try to...
No, I haven’t found another I like yet. I don’t have much experience with thumbs besides this one. Getting one that nests tight will be important for the bucket to store. I think the Titan one can be modified to work, but it disappoints me that the pin bent on first use. I did see they now offer...
I added a 32” Titan thumb on my FLU. That was a mistake. Unlike better designed thumbs, it will not fold out of the way without removing the brace bar. In storage, the thumb hits the center tooth and prevents the bucket from folding completely. To add insult to injury, it bent a pin on the first...
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