I will call this an initial review. I have 4hrs engine time with this grapple since this morning. I stopped because I have a pile of wood that’s max height for my loader. So tomorrow I will light it on fire. As it burns down I will add to it. I will probably bounce around a bit pointing out things I like and things I don’t about it so far. *so I did this on my phone and typed it all out with the intention of the pictures being in between the paragraphs however they all ended up inserting at the end for some reason. Sorry.
First look at it sitting on the pallet. You can see that HLA makes a beast of a product. 385lbs The upper tines are all gusseted. They put a protective cover over the cylinder which is blocking the cylinder front grease fitting. I’m going to pop it out and put A 90deg fitting in there. I’m about 98% positive that a tractor of this size won’t be able to damage this thing.
The 90 at the cylinder top hose actually came loose. It was installed so that it hit the top frame at full open and it “Lefty loosied” it. I noticed the oil right away.Went to the garage and tightened it up. No big deal.
It didn’t take long to knock the paint off the teeth. I do have some lumber and logs that have been sitting for so long that they are frozen into the ground. Some are still there.Pretty sure if I put this on a track loader or bigger tractor, I’d have been able to rip them out of the frost.
With this on the business end of the LA340 it sucks about 1/2 the lifting capacity; however I didn’t find that I couldn’t curl or lift whatever I managed to grab with the jaws today. I do have a pile of old concrete retaining wall pieces and abunch of large rocks to move once the ground gets harder so we will see what it can do with those.
First look at it sitting on the pallet. You can see that HLA makes a beast of a product. 385lbs The upper tines are all gusseted. They put a protective cover over the cylinder which is blocking the cylinder front grease fitting. I’m going to pop it out and put A 90deg fitting in there. I’m about 98% positive that a tractor of this size won’t be able to damage this thing.
The 90 at the cylinder top hose actually came loose. It was installed so that it hit the top frame at full open and it “Lefty loosied” it. I noticed the oil right away.Went to the garage and tightened it up. No big deal.
It didn’t take long to knock the paint off the teeth. I do have some lumber and logs that have been sitting for so long that they are frozen into the ground. Some are still there.Pretty sure if I put this on a track loader or bigger tractor, I’d have been able to rip them out of the frost.
With this on the business end of the LA340 it sucks about 1/2 the lifting capacity; however I didn’t find that I couldn’t curl or lift whatever I managed to grab with the jaws today. I do have a pile of old concrete retaining wall pieces and abunch of large rocks to move once the ground gets harder so we will see what it can do with those.
