I am looking into replacing the corded remote with a wireless system on my autocrane.So far i am leaning to the Kar-tech brand. They look identical to the oem autocrane. Any pros or cons or experiences with them?
I'm watching this thread because I want to convert my wrecker to remote control.
Mitch504 is your control valve on the wrecker manual or electric? I converted a rollback a while back and had to use pull of solenoids,brackets and a bunch of linkage wich did not seem to last verry long. But with just a couple of functions on a electric valve body on a wrecker should not be to pricy.It gets pricy when proportional controls and more than 4 functions get involved in the mix.
One thing I heard recently but have no experience with is that someone with experience building R/C cars could have the connections to build a remote for a lot less money than one bought off the shelf. On the Autocrane, I had one with the wireless remote and it was handy, when it worked, but mine had issues that made me wish for one with a cord.
This is a big rollback, right now it has manual spool valves. What I've been thinking about doing is adding an electric section just to run the winch, maybe with a manual diverter valve to keep the manual section for a backup. I thought about doing the pull solenoid thing but it seemed like it might have reliability issues. It would be nice to convert the whole thing, but not necessary. I probably wouldn't mess with it at all except this thing has a 20,000lb winch w/ no freewheel.
for the rollback winch all you need is a push pull solenoid to move the lever in and out. the ones i have been around were the lodar brand and the worked fairly well most of the time.
I am interested to in this we bought a service truck that the cat dealer in joplin had and it went thru the tornado and they took the remote equipment off the crane! My IMT dealer said it wuz $3000 for corded remote and $5000 for a wireless remote! I have done some research on the net and come up with American Crane in Iowa but so far they haven't replied to emails! Jerry
i have converted one on a maintainer to hetronics. worked great. i think it was $1700 for remote and receiver. my local dealer sent me a wiring sheet with it took about 4 hours to mount and wire it correctly. the hetronic came on one of my other service trucks new from the factory so i went back to that on the next service truck. i hate corded remotes they are always hanging up on stuff to short and a huge tripping hazard, there is already too many of those in our line of work........................theironoracle