New old toy again! I turned a W450 farm tractor into a loader Backhoe unit!

[tcmtech]

Well I have been at it again working on the customizing the old farm equipment to be more useful!

About 4 years ago we picked up this old Farmall W450 on a ‘if you can get it running you can have it’ deal a few miles from the farm which of course took me about two hours to get it running and driving well enough to get home.
Since then I scrapped out the old loader system and got a better one plus this year it was further modified to become our first backhoe tractor!

The wife and I are working, mostly just I, on building a new house and with all the oil field construction plus last year’s big flood the rates of contractors have gone up so high a person is honestly better off just buying their own equipment to do any work themselves.

I picked up a new Case MBX 1114 backhoe a month ago on a trade for work and parts deal and refitted it to the old W450 farm tractor so that I could do my own trenching and sewer work opposed to paying to have it done.

I did run into a few bugs at first being the modern backhoe needed a 12 GPM 2500 PSI hydraulic power source. At first I ran it off the original PTO pump which came with the tractor but unfortunately couldn’t handle the pressure anymore and blew its seals out.
After that I switched it out to a brand new one I picked up on eBay which worked great for about 20 minutes until the 6 gallon hydraulic reservoir started to overheat. From there I redesigned the whole system to use the tractors main transmission case as the hydraulic reservoir which holds around 12 gallons of fluid plus has about 20 times the surface area of the old tank system.
After that it has been working good but after about 2 -3 hours of solid digging the whole tractor does get rather hot to be on!

So far I have dug most of the large drain field pit for the new sewer where the old trailer is being moved to and the water line trench going down there as well, the new house is going where the old trailer sits and the old trailer is moving about 150 feet down the yard in to an area that was old pasture that never got used much.

Both digging events took around 5 hours and just over 10 gallons of gas total which is not bad at all for this 50 year old farm tractor as the base!

What I started with,
View attachment 65588

What it is now.
View attachment 65589

Some digging,
View attachment 65590

Digging down the hill was interesting.
View attachment 65591

The sewer drain field pit
View attachment 65592

 

[jpanhalt]

Great pictures and a nice looking conversion. I though you had a mini-excavator?

John

 

[Resistanceisbutyl]

Very nice.

I've seen plenty of bizarre equipment mashups (Do you get Farm Show magazine?) but aside from the paint difference, the backhoe looks like it came from the factory on the tractor. Excellent job!

 

[tcmtech]

I try to do my best to make things appear to fit right or at least just seem right to the eye.

I have Friends who make odd stuff from time to time but a lot of their stuff really looks like it was built by someone who was all thumbs and in a hurry and the end results tend to work the same as well.

One guy built his own log splitter and his first comment to me was, can you believe I used an old riding lawn mower engine for the power source? Well yea I can being all you did was take and cut a perfectly good riding lawn mower in half with a cutting torch and weld it to the side of your log splitter beam. (Steering wheel and controls still attached of course.)

 

[atferrari]

Down the hill - how?

Sorry for the surely stupid question: the "digging down the hill", you did it actually going down or climbing up? Where was the machine leading to?

I am used to watch backhoes working mostly inside holds to bring bulk cargo into the hatch square for the crane driver to pick it up always from the same place.

I always admired people able to do mechanical work of any kind.

 

[jpanhalt]

Note, tcmtech said it was "interesting." If it were me, I would back up the hill while digging or hire someone with a longer stick that could reach further. In other words, dig as far down as possible from the top. Then go to the bottom and repeat. Then, depending on pucker factor back up the hill, finish by hand, or hire someone.

John

 

[tcmtech]

I had to dig going down the hill being it was too steep to back up it I and the whole point of having your own equipment is so that you dont have to hire someone else to do your work for you!

Relating to digging by hand NO WAY! What we have around here is all hard packed glacial loam and clay. Its like digging in concrete plus due to our deep frost line everything has to be 5 feet down or deeper.

I put the trench on the hillside down around 7 - 9 feet being that I plan to landscape that area and I am not sure how much of it may get taken off.

The problem I ran into with going down the hill was my hydraulics draw their fluid from the back of the transmission case so when I went over the edge all the fluid would run to the front and I would loose my hydraulics. The simple solution was to just overfill the transmission fluid by 5 gallons and then use the loader bucket to hold the tractor level enough to dig.

 

[jpanhalt]

You have got nerve. I must say, that is pretty impressive. If you are in the Cleveland area, I have a hill I would like you to mow, going down. I popped the PTO loose transitioning from the horizontal to the slope -- I now come at it from an angle. Obviously, I am a newbie with such equipment.

As for digging by hand, remember our canals up here (e.g., the Erie Canal) were dug by hand. You only need a thousand helpers, or so.

John

 

[tvtech]

I had to dig going down the hill being it was too steep to back up it I and the whole point of having your own equipment is so that you dont have to hire someone else to do your work for you!

Relating to digging by hand NO WAY! What we have around here is all hard packed glacial loam and clay. Its like digging in concrete plus due to our deep frost line everything has to be 5 feet down or deeper.

I put the trench on the hillside down around 7 - 9 feet being that I plan to landscape that area and I am not sure how much of it may get taken off.

The problem I ran into with going down the hill was my hydraulics draw their fluid from the back of the transmission case so when I went over the edge all the fluid would run to the front and I would loose my hydraulics. The simple solution was to just overfill the transmission fluid by 5 gallons and then use the loader bucket to hold the tractor level enough to dig.

You never cease to amaze me with your endeavours

Kind of like McGuyver..from the Eighties. Soldier on man, and have as much fun as possible

Cheers,
tvtech

 

[tcmtech]

As for digging by hand, remember our canals up here (e.g., the Erie Canal) were dug by hand. You only need a thousand helpers, or so.

Most days I would be happy just having one who leaned on a shovel less than I do!

The hill wasn't so bad really. I did run the dozer up and down it twice to smooth out the trenching route first but it does sit at around a 20 - 25 degree angle for 50 feet or so and I kept the backhoe bucket in the trench every time I moved down that way if I started sliding it would only let me go about 3 - 4 feet before it would stop me and from there I could push the cutting edge of the loader bucket on the front of the tractor into the ground to keep from sliding any further when I went back to digging.

As far as being brave I did grow up on a farm and to me any hill that the brakes still work on without sliding too much is a hill you can work on!

 

[tcmtech]

You never cease to amaze me with your endeavours

It just part of being resourceful and being too stubborn to pay someone else to do anything I can learn to do myself.

But honestly if you knew how outrageous the local contractors prices have gotten you woould probably be just as willing to go my route and do it yourself with home built and/or customized equipment as well.

Those Case MBX 1114 three point Backhoes retail for around $7000 locally whereas hiring a contractor to dig my water, power lines, sewer, basement, and garage footings would have ran three times that and probably would not have got around to doing it until late fall.

Sorry but for $21,000 and a three month wait a person is money ahead to just go out and buy a good used backhoe or modify a farm tractor to become one, and as we did also pick up a good used bulldozer as well.

The best part with that is when the projects are done we own the equipment and not someone else!

 

[tvtech]

It just part of being resourceful and being too stubborn to pay someone else to do anything I can learn to do myself.

But honestly if you knew how outrageous the local contractors prices have gotten you woould probably be just as willing to go my route and do it yourself with home built and/or customized equipment as well.

Those Case MBX 1114 three point Backhoes retail for around $7000 locally whereas hiring a contractor to dig my water, power lines, sewer, basement, and garage footings would have ran three times that and probably would not have got around to doing it until late fall.

Sorry but for $21,000 and a three month wait a person is money ahead to just go out and buy a good used backhoe or modify a farm tractor to become one, and as we did also pick up a good used bulldozer as well.

The best part with that is when the projects are done we own the equipment and not someone else!

Hats off to you and your solid thinking. What you said makes sense. A lot of sense.

Best regards,
tvtech

 

[Mikebits]

What ever became of your firetruck?

 

[tcmtech]

What ever became of your firetruck? .

The house project became the priority this summer so its been patiently sitting behind the shop.
I still go out and start it up every few weeks and sit there and grin.

I did come across a International Loadstar 1800 grain truck a little while back thats been stretched and converted over to a tandem axle and I am thinking of doing some trading get the back of it from the cab back and splice that on to my fire trucks front half from the cab forward.

The Loadstar has the front end all smashed in and my firetrucks gross weight limit is too low to make it into a single axle flatbed for hauling our Case 1150 dozer around.

The fire trucks gross rating is 36,000# with an empty weight of around 14,000 if converted to a flatbed but the dozer is pushing 28,000#. The tandem axle Loadstar's back end is good for around 35,000#+ just by itself so with that connected to the front of the old fire truck I would essentially have a 20 foot flatbed truck with a gross capacity of over 50,000+ and a good 285+ HP high torque engine to move it around.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

All I can say is "Way Cool!"