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Spent $600 on a used hydraulic thumb for my excavator and it paid for itself in 3 weeks
I picked up a used mechanical thumb for my 5 ton machine about 4 months back for $600 off a guy in Baton Rouge. First job was clearing a creek bed full of logs and stumps and I was able to grab and stack everything without a spotter jumping in and out. Before that I was losing maybe an hour a day rigging chains and swinging stuff around by hand. The welds on the mounting plate looked rough so I had a buddy run a few passes over them for $50 and it's been solid since. I know some guys swear by the hydraulic ones but for what I do the mechanical has been plenty. Anyone else running a thumb on a smaller machine and how do you keep the pins from walking out?
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kellyr1815d ago
Man I wish I had your luck finding one for $600, I paid almost double that for mine and still had to fix a sloppy weld on the bracket before it would even bolt up right. On the pin walking out thing, mine kept doing that until I switched to pins with a hole drilled through the end and stuck a hairpin clip on each side, haven't lost one since. Also hit the pins with a little grease every couple days of use, seems like the dry ones are the ones that wiggle loose first. On my little 5 ton the mechanical has been plenty too, half the time I'm grabbing brush and old fence posts, not doing anything the thumb can't handle.
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