hi guys. i’m thinking about building a thumb for my old ck. i have collected some ar400 plate for the fingers and some 1.5in shafting for the pins. have been looking online and have made a cardboard template for the fingers and have a basic idea for the thumb design kinda figured out. a manual thumb would still be better than no thumb but am curious about making it hydraulic. my question is. how would one go about tapping into the hydraulic system on one of these old 580ck’s. i wouldn’t want to do it wrong and cause something to break or be damaged so i thought i’d ask on here in case anyone has added aux hyd to theirs successfully. exact year is not known but it’s a late 60’s early 70’s ck. if it’s difficult or expensive to “tap” into the hyd system correctly i will likely just make it manual but hydraulic would be more convenient to use if there is an easy way to tap into the system. couldn’t find much about adding aux to these old machines. found one where the guy was adding a valve to the rear for a hay bind or something and he just run it inline after the loader valve but there was some concern that he was not doing it right and was rendering the relief valve useless and could have a dangerous situation that i would prefer to avoid. any input would be greatly appreciated. i am going to replace the front cutting edge with a strip of ar400 plate and once that’s done i plan to begin building the thumb and mounting brackets. just trying to decide if hydraulic is more trouble than it’s worth or not.
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