Hydraulic Winches Finding New Applications

Dealer Creates Novel Winch Mounting for Track Loader

No doubt about it—heavy equipment dealers are the masters of creativity when it comes to winning an order. Keystone Equipment in Sand Springs, Oklahoma proved that recently to the great satisfaction of the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Tulsa’s Vegetation Control Department Supervisor Ray Teeters says that the city maintains their floodways by clearing stream banks of small trees, brush and other vegetation. A track loader is the best tool because it can work on the adverse ground conditions and can still be used to load the brush that it clears away. But muddy, slippery and steep stream banks are the perfect place to get stuck easily. Jim LaCourse, their Inventory Control Manager, specified a winch on their new track loader to help them get out of some tough spots.

Keystone had the track loader, a John Deere 755C. Keystone also had the winch, the Allied WH6G hydraulic winch. Unfortunately, there was no mounting designed to put the winch onto the track loader.

End of story? Not very likely. Keystone sales rep Bill Cook made sure of that. With some strong support from Allied’s engineering department, Bill Cook and service technician Kevin Staggers put their heads together to come up with a mounting that would work.

The first challenge was the rear face for mounting the winch. The track loader has a sloping rear face and counterweights, with no place to mount a winch securely. Keystone developed a bracket out of 1-1/8-inch thick steel that tied into the ripper mounts. They removed the rear counterweight, but left the underside counterweight in place, to protect the engine.

The bigger challenge was the hydraulic system. The track loader was already outfitted with main hydraulics and one auxiliary for the bucket. They added a second set of auxiliary hydraulics, normally for ripper operation, to operate the winch. Kevin came up with an ingenious electric over hydraulic control system to allow the standard ripper control to control the winch.

Fortunately, the Allied WH Series hydraulic winches use a self-contained design, with motor, hoses and gearing inside the winch. Once the ripper control was in place, it was just a matter of connecting hoses.

The track loader also shares duty with the Tulsa Street Department. Allied Territory Manager Don Thomas caught up with the track loader in operation with the Street Department. It was being used for demolition of drug-contaminated houses that were deemed unfit for habitation. It’s apparent that Keystone did a splendid job of integrating the winch with the 755C. According to Kevin, the customer is thrilled with the results.

When the 755C gets stuck, there is little doubt the winch will be able to pull itself out. The WH6G can develop a line pull of around 80,000 lbs at bare drum conditions, while the loader itself weighs in at around 49,000 lbs with the winch.

The great thing about a high-performance hydraulic winch like the WH6G is that it made the whole deal possible. There really was no other option for getting a fully functioning winch on the 755C. It has no PTO to drive a traditional PTO style winch. And hydraulic winches developed for cranes or other fixed applications could not handle the abuse that the WH6G easily withstands.