1999 7300 w/417 loader

[John Wessel]

Picked this up 2 weeks ago with several attachments from the original owner. It’s time to get it set up the way I want it.

 

[John Wessel]

Ordered a quick attach for the bucket. I got lucky they actually had one built and on the shelf. The pins had not been greased in a long time, but they all came out relatively easily.

 

[John Wessel]

Installed the quick release bracket on the loader arms after cleaning up the rust and greasing the pins.

I put the mounting plate on the quick release bracket and then started to position everything for the mock up. The instructions were marginal, basically saying to keep the same angle as the original brackets. The flat side of the bucket was not high enough to mount the mounting plate, flush top and bottom. I used the bottom hole of the original mounting bracket and the loader Arms to determine the position of the mounting plate.

The next step was to cut the the original brackets off, I use my plasma, cutter, some cutting discs and aggressive flap wheels to clean up everything.

 

[John Wessel]

I use my caterpillar loader with the forks as a mobile workstation. I positioned the weld on mounting plate on the bucket. Luckily, I was able to position the forks in a way the back of the bucket was flat. There was no way to use clamps to hold the plate in place.. I also have a 2x4”x1/4” C channel positioned on the bucket that will become a mounting bracket for chain hooks and to stiffen up the bucket overall.

I tack welded the mounting plate on the bucket then put it on the loader and cycled it several times to make sure there was no interference with the loader Arms, the hydraulic cylinders, etc. Once I was satisfied I had everything properly positioned I burned the bracket in.

I used the bottom edge of the bucket as a reference point for the mounting plate to keep it square. I burned the entire bracket on and then started the process to install the C channel.

 

[John Wessel]

Because the mounting plate did not sit flush at the top it was a need for a gusset. I addressed that after I got the
C channel burn in and the chain hooks installed.

The C channel and the chain hooks are also burned in. You can see the gap between the top of the mounting plate and C channel. The Gussett will cover that gap, providing more support to the mounting plate and help prevent debris from getting in that area.

I got the mounting plate Gusset installed, finished up some of the welding I needed to do yet .

I cleaned everything off with brake cleaner, used a torpedo heater to heat everything up and put a quick coat of paint on the bare metal. I’ll get a couple more coats on it once it warms up.

 

[John Wessel]

The next step in this process was to put a cutting edge on the bucket. I got 2-different size cutting edges samples, one was 4” and the other 3” . The 3 inch probably would’ve worked if I would’ve drilled holes in the bucket and did a lot of grinding on the bottom portion of it. The 4” although overkill allowed me to use the back edge of the original blade as a straight edge. Kind of gives the bucket, a fat lip appearance but by the time I wear it out, I’ll need a new bucket. it didn’t go quite as clean as I was hoping but it’s straight and fit well. It took longer to preheat everything then it did to actually put the edge on.

 

[John Wessel]

The video was shot prior to all the additional work being done. But it shows how well everything came together. I tried hooking using the tractor quick attach to hook up to the Caterpillar attachments it hooked to every single one of them flawlessly.

 

[Eric Wittersheim]

Great job!