I was thinking of getting a set of forks for my 580l just the clamp on type. I saw some in northern and on another site for roughly the same price then on guest in dustrie site for just about double . does any one have any experience with either brand guest and payne http://www.tractors-equipment.com/Forks.html http://www.guestind.net/bucketmountedloaderfork.htm both would be the lip or clamp on type guest is around $1200 and the payne is $650
they work well
We have the payne bucket hitch mount and it is a nice product, but for forks I would prefer the pin on style like the guest brand or the type of forks that fold over the bucket and stay on the machine.
We have the Guest style forks, not sure if they are Guest brand or something else. We have had them for so long now I forgot. We have had several backhoes through the years and just keep the forks and have new mounts made for the next hoe. As for the clamp on forks I have no experience, but have always thought they would be a pain and could possibly tweak the bucket or something. As for the top mount Guest style forks they are great. Very easy to attach and detach. Just drive up, curl the bucket down, grab and go. Detaching is the reverse, and no need to get off of the machine. I think they are really handy on the jobsite, we will grab the forks, pick up some pipe, drop the pipe, then drop the forks, and then go and grab a bucket of gravel, etc. With a clamp on fork, you would be getting off of the machine, wrestling with the forks, tightening them down, then back on the machine, and over and over. Now the bad about any forks on a backhoe, you really can't see the tip of the forks very well when on the machine. So sometimes you will need a spotter if picking something up on a pallet, etc. on the ground. It's easy if you are unloading a truck since the pallets will be up high where you can peek under the bucket. The way I do it sometimes to pick a pallet off of the ground by myself is curl the bucket down so you can see the tip of the forks under the bucket with the bucket high and then guess or go by feel as you curl back up and drop the bucket down.
hang and clamp on forks Where i work we have several systems , guest,clamp on, quick hitch,flip over and most do well as long as you do not overload or have ruff ground to work threw, we have been trying to buy the attachment coupler with all new machines,4x1 buckets standard/ then a single pallet/pipe fork attachment due to the weight/loading needs. training is the issue with forks, we have to cert all personel who use them as a fork lift on loaders/backhoes/farm tractors, this is easy for a owner/operator, but when you have several workers it becomes a problem fast, this changes the lift limits and can make a easy pick turn into a mess quick, a bucket addon forks change the (angle of the dangle), load charts and decals should be placed where workers can read and understand limits, we also have workers that are not to use forks of any type due to no training, hope i did not get long winded, but there are alot of forks on the market, and i use them with caution, but i like a coupler on the machine and pallet/pipe forks that fit it, you can see better, lift more, and keep the load close to the machine/low to the ground.
We have a set of Guest style forks for our 580sk. Haven't got them put on yet though... I liked the whole idea of not needing to get off the machine to attach them. Got ours for around a $1000 plus some shipping out of a place in king, nc.
I would not need them for alot of moving just now and then and it would probably be a 2k -4k lbs at a time. one of the quetions i had was this will not distort the bucket? the other is what makes guest better than payne? one is a $1,200 + shipping the other which is payne is only $650+ shipping? they both look pretty much the same. why spend more for the same thing. If i was to use it more i would love to get the quick attach type.
Just my opinion, but I woulnd't care for the clamp on forks. I'd love to have an IT machine, but since I don't, I just made my own forks. I bought a set of used 8,000 pound forklift forks (for $100), extended the height of them, welded slide collars to the top, and used a piece of hardend 1" solid bar for them to slide on. Then I simply cut 4 hooks out of some 1" plate I had laying around, and welde them on the bucket with either 7018 or my flux-core welder. I need to build at least 1 more set of forks, but all three backhoes have hooks on them. I built them in February of 2001 [the day Dale Earnhardt died in the Daytona 500 ], And we havn't bent or broke them yet. I've lifted things with them that I had to stretch the backhoe boom out on my 580SL to handle, with no problems. (I don't advocate trying to lift more than the machine will handle, and I'd probably yell at one of my guys for trying it.)