|
I have an old Wagner on mine. It does work, but it brings with it a whole passle of problems. With the loader on, the tractor is virtually impossible to work on. You can't get to anything, including the gas cap. It makes the tractor flat dangerous to mount and dismount. I've hurt myself several times getting on and off because of that blasted loaders frame. It makes the tractor swing and wallow when you drive it. And greatly reduces rear wheel traction. I have to use heavy counterweights out back to hold the rear tires onto the ground. I do think a loader can work on an N, but several points should be addressed. 1, the tractor is very light, so a heavy loader is overkill for an N, and will cause lots of traction and steering problems. You would almost want a lawn tractor loader mounted on an N to not overwhelm it.
2, Get the bucket back close to the tractor. The old units have the bucket many feet out in front, where the pendulum effect is made far far worse then it needs to be. A loaded bucket that sits back closer to the tractor will not swing the machine around like a loaded bucket sitting six feet in front of the tractor. Set back it also won't try to lift the rear tires off the ground as much.
3, use a modern design framework. As in a heavy vertical mount at the dashboard, nothing in the way of the operator area, and the bent down arms for the bucket itself. This will allow you to mount without danger, allows you to work on the tractor itself, and gets the load back closer to the tractor. With that in mind, the two that come to my mind as possibles are the Paulson and the CadPlan models. The Paulson is a very nice looking unit, but it uses the onboard hydraulics and a trip bucket. That limits it greatly, and makes it slow. Though it could be made better with the addition of auxiliary hydraulics. The CadPlan one is nice too, using live hydraulics, but they want you to use a very large loader on the N. One that I really think is too large for the tractor. If you're clever with a torch, you could certainly adapt virtually any loader you find at an auction onto an N.
|
