Having wet weather already in full effect this season I am looking into other solutions for getting around my sites. We currently run skytrak 6036 and our sites Are primarily clay soils around the whole yard with the exception of the driveway that is filled with sand when we get there to start framing stage. I have seen the after market track kits for telehandlers but have never seen them around our area to get advice on them or try them. Does anyone have experience with these? Doing some research on our wheeled machines it looks like we have 77psi of ground pressure while excavators dozers and ctl's have around 5psi ground pressure. Not sure if we need to think outside the box and go to a crane of some sort and a ctl to move material around? Jekko makes a small crawler crane(spk60) that is interesting but has no fork attachement. Also maeda has one similar but not sure how these would effect our process. I really need a Frankenstein machine that is a d4 dozer with a telehandlers boom on it! Sincerely, A guy that has been stuck to many times in october!
What tires you running? Perhaps get a wider tire? More aggressive tread....
http://www.righttracksystemsinc.com/aerial-lift-telehandler/ I have a hard time seeing the camso track holding up when you pull onto pavement and want to really crank the wheels one direction and then the other, I don't know how you would keep from rolling the tracks off. I've seen cranes mounted on excavator carriers, the older ones typically don't have much boom in them. Grove, mantis and link belt all make new track mounted hydraulic telescopic cranes, but they are expensive, heavy to move, and would tear up a housing development street in short order.
Not exactly sure on the tire size off the top of my head, but on three of our machines we have the standard mud tire and one machine we upgraded to a wider tire that does seem to help out a bit more than standard but doesn't get the job done always. I agree with the tracked systems with turning on pavement or even catching them on a frozen dirt rutted up site. Seems like a disaster waiting to happen
This work? I have tried to contact this guy several times. He is a member here. I gave up and did something different. However the machine speaks for itself and with a real operator in it is pretty handy.
These are expensive but I really like the concept. https://www.manitou.com/en/s/U8901SYAACoAdmRf In a perfect world one of these set up with a CTL bringing in materials would be slick.
The mecalic looks like an awesome machine but the one downfall for me would be reach. On a two story home I would need to be able to reach the roofline and raise osb up to height of 25'. Also sometimes having to raise a man up in manbasket at those heights in certain senarios would be where this machine would strike out for me. It would probably do the job on a small ranch home. I have seen a tilt rotator attachment that can be mounted on an excavator that allows forks and I thought that would be the ticket for me but I still think I would lack reach for height even with a 20 ton excavator. Unfortunately these machine were built to dig down, not reach up and out like I need or I think I would have my solution. The manitou rotators seem like an awesome machine in fact I had the chance to demo one and just turned it down when I seen the spec sheet on them. They weigh in 30-40k lbs. A lot more that my skytrak that's around 24k and I'm already stuck with. Another thing on the roatator is that it doesnt look like it is made for mud. Not much ground clearance, heavy. The concept is great, in fact I found an older euro euro company that made a tracked roatating tele but I can't find much info so I assume they went under. Giraff I believe was the brand green colored machines. Enough negativity, The good news is I did demo a manitou telehandler 8044 model. VERY IMPRESSED! Sits quite a bit higher than skytrak, engine is centered more between Axel's rather than all on rear on the skytrak. Power for days (120 horse) with def (which I don't mind one bit). Took both machines side by side through the same nasty clay mud on a site yesterday and what the skytrak struggled at the manitou made easy work of. I really tried to get stuck with the manitou and couldnt! I'm not saying they are perfect by any means but a drastic improvement from what we have been using.
Here is a link of the tilt roatator I was talking about
What tires did the manitou have? Isn't that basically a rebranded gehl machine?
Titan 14-24tg Motor grader hd For tires on the manitou We run the same brand and model tire on our skytraks but a 13-24tg Manitou tire is 2" taller and about 1.5" wider And not exactly sure on the gehl. What I do know is what the manitou salesman told me. That manitou bought gehl a few years ago so they are made very similar. I have never seen or ran a gehl so I can't compare.