Skidder pictures

[kiko]

Happen to have one of my skidders home for a little while.  Thought I would share pics . I built this skidder out of five different machines.

  

  

  

 

[lopet]

Nothing wrong sitting on the porch having a beverage and looking at a skidder.

That's a beast of a grapple.

So it's a Cat hybrid ?
Are you gonna tell us what's in and on her ??

[ga jones]

Yes I would like to here the story of what's in it. Nice machine. Are u partial to cat or just what u had available

[kiko]

I own and operate a forestry equipment salvage yard.  Aside from the original machine, parts came from two 525 b s , a 535c and a 545c.  It is all Cat. That one rusty limb riser came off the 545c that had an engine fire. I plan on painting the whole machine at some point so I will deal with that limb riser at that point.  I have replaced the rear window( new parts).   I also have a larger grapple to put on it.  I am saving up the parts to make it a dual arch before installing that bigger grapple.  I have been doing a little clearing around my place , so it was fun to actually do a little bit of skidding.  I use this machine as a recovery vehicle to get up the salvage I buy normally. And yes I am partial to Cat.  IMO there are the best engineered and easiest to repair, some will disagree on that last point.   Once your figure out how it was assembled on the assembly line it comes down in big chunks.

[ga jones]

That's good to know about the salvage yard. However I imagine it's mostly large southern style plantation equipment.I almost bought a 96 518 before I found my 380.the 518 had 32 inch rubber to big for me. I like CAT stuff.I still like the tigercat stuff more. I have a 3406b in my truck. And my cat owned prentice loader. They are pricy on parts.

[kiko]

There are a lot of aftermarket parts available for prentice loaders.  I think a lot of the tigercat bunchers ,  although productive and heavy built IMO the skidders  will nickel and dime you too death and with slack dealers the parts are often in Canada.  If tigercat parts are ordered after two o'clock they charge you an additional premium percentage to get off their a** and print a shipping label. Used parts for tiger cat skidders sell well however.  Cat parts are pricy but they are readily available .  Loggers on quota have to be running to make it around here.

[ga jones]

I just bought 2 port relief valves and 2 crossover relief valves for the swing on my loader. Cat forest products only. 400.00 each. And the swing motor 800.00 the motor I thought was reasonable.

[kiko]

Ga Jones , What kind of prentice do you have?

[Neilo]

Thanks for the photos.

Are you going to rebuild the fender, or get one off another machine?

[kiko]

I will replace the fender with one cut off another.  Will do that when the conversion to dual function goes down. The right fender has also been trimmed when it was bent into the tire.  Backing through the limb gate got those fenders.

[ga jones]

120E

[treeslayer2003]

kiko you have a salvage yard????? oh i am gonna bug you at some point lol. save the junk lol.

[tj240]

Chain it up and send it. I dont think you will sit on it long.

[kiko]

Got axles and axle parts ? I do.

  

 

[BargeMonkey]

 I'm impressed.      since your a man who knows ALOT, and you deal with boneyard parts what is better, 1400 or swede axles ? I'm trying to stay narrow on 24.5. Any advantage to an H over a G3 ?

[kiko]

Barge monkey, how far to you want to go in that discussion?  Don't want to be long winded if you are just curious about my preference. Did you see the three sweda axle housings next to first beam?  I had a lot of axle stuff going on today and got off track of the thread with the axle pics  so here are pics of the components for the dual function conversion. They will be coming from my phone.

[kiko]