FLU419 SEE HMMH HME Owners group

[The FLU farm]

Hey, might as well get it off my chest: I wasn't even aware that I (or anybody else here, for that matter) owed you any explanations or solutions to your problems with your HMMH.
Perhaps wrongfully, I thought that this forum was meant for its members to share information (on a voluntary basis) about our relatively rare vehicles, and also to inquire about solutions to problems we run into - but in a polite rather than demanding fashion.

And I may very well be wrong about this, too - and since you are supposedly too busy to take a picture or two of the terrain you travel over, it makes it trickier yet to guess - but it does seem to me that you are forcing your FLU10344 to do things it wasn't meant to do.
Keep in mind that HMMH stands for High Mobility Material Handler, and that it is not named HSMH. The "S" in the latter standing for speed.

No, as far as I remember, I have not read any manual about how the HMMH should be driven, and when the lockout is supposed to be used. But I strongly suspect that it's not meant to be used over rough terrain, and especially at speed. Doing that just doesn't make sense in my mind.
But then, I also thought that the forks could be pinned down to help get them into positions they wouldn't easily go into when loose on the hinges. Never would I have thought that they would be used to enable high speed driving. Well, alright, if I was taking fire, I would also speed up, but I wouldn't worry about bouncing forks under those circumstances.

And while I'm barking up the wrong tree, I might as well add that I think it's a distinct possibility that your bad battery went bad due to...yes, speeding over rough terrain. Sulfation combined with jarring can do that to batteries.

Surely you know what FLU stands for, and most likely you've also heard Freightliners being called Freightshakers. You're just taking that nickname to a new level.

Alright, I'm off my soapbox, and will refrain from interfering with your quests for speed and suspension lockouts again.

 

[BigBison]

So Bison, I'm guessing that the above means that you're not interested in trying to use hydraulic cylinders as a lockout, as discussed earlier?
And from what I can tell from the few photos I've seen, the HME's rear lockout would be easy to duplicate. I'd probably use trailer balls and couplers at the wheels, and something along those lines would be a near necessity on the front, but follow the same simple principle.
Just a few suggestions from "the other guy" with his "garage-queen".

Hey, I meant nothing by any of that, just all in good fun and out of more than a little frustration -- knowing your name and posting it to a public forum are two different things, and you're obviously into using yours as much as I'm into using mine vs. having a garage queen. What I mean about the whole lockout thing, is it would be nice to have a third user on the user group, and I'm down for trashing it and starting over using hydraulic lockout cylinders or any other idea besides keeping that system "OEM".

I'll be OK once I'm snowed in. For now, the extended building season has me further behind on more projects than if it had started snowing a month ago. I don't think I'm "owed any explanations," my only point here is sharing my experience, with operating a machine with no manual or experienced operators to turn to for help. Not bitching, just documenting, all right?

 

[BigBison]

I think it's a distinct possibility that your bad battery went bad due to...yes, speeding over rough terrain. Sulfation combined with jarring can do that to batteries.

Maybe so, but more likely from driving the HMMH on unpaved county roads just to get it to my worksite. Or just being five-year-old batteries on a truck which was overhauled 13 years ago and only racked up 15 operating hours since then before coming to me several weeks ago, so they probably spent most of that time in a state of partial discharge while sitting around. Not being obstinate, just sayin' my bad battery may just be entirely expected because it's a battery, not some sort of anomaly attributable to my somehow abusing the Mog by driving it 25mph on an unpaved county road for a few miles?

 

[The FLU farm]

Hey, I meant nothing by any of that, just all in good fun and out of more than a little frustration -- knowing your name and posting it to a public forum are two different things, and you're obviously into using yours as much as I'm into using mine vs. having a garage queen. What I mean about the whole lockout thing, is it would be nice to have a third user on the user group, and I'm down for trashing it and starting over using hydraulic lockout cylinders or any other idea besides keeping that system "OEM".

I'll be OK once I'm snowed in. For now, the extended building season has me further behind on more projects than if it had started snowing a month ago. I don't think I'm "owed any explanations," my only point here is sharing my experience, with operating a machine with no manual or experienced operators to turn to for help. Not bitching, just documenting, all right?

Alright, fair enough. I can definitely relate to frustrating experiences. For whatever reason, that has become the norm rather than the exception recently. However, while I failed miserably when writing what I wrote above, I try to do my best to keep my frustrations to myself.

Also, I find it very therapeutic to try learning to operate machinery, and to figure out what makes it tick, without help in written or other forms. I love to learn, about almost anything, but especially about vehicles, tires, batteries, hydraulics, and machinery in general. The more I learn about these things, the more I realize that I don't know squat about them.
That's probably why I find the FLUs so interesting, as they are new things to learn to operate and have a plethora of systems and things to challenge me.

I got tired of racing (cars) at an early age since tracks are really only 2-dimensional. Got a Jeep and could incorporate vertical challenges, too.
'Wheeled all over the place for a long time, and learned an awful lot. Including how to build a better suited (according to me, anyway) Jeep pretty much from scratch. Eventually relapsed into the fast car stuff again, but it wasn't to be long lived. By now I have sold almost all of my quick cars and bought FLUs instead.
Yes, I could've bought a regular backhoe, which would've been more effective for what I'm doing, but that seemed about as appealing as buying a Prius.
A tele handler would've also been a more logical choice for me, but once I found out about the existence of the HMMH (while reading up on the SEE I had recently purchased) there was no doubt in my mind that I "needed" one. Yes, by now I was somewhat familiar with the Unimog chassis, but never having operated a crane, let alone a knuckle boom, the HMMH was irresistible.

Hours spent reading about FLUs (wherever I found relevant information, and a lot of that was right here on SS) has definitely helped me understand them
better. But I still like to try figuring out their quirks on my own. And to find solutions to (often self inflicted) problems with them.
And one thing that's certain is that had I not spent countless hours conquering trails, mostly in my Jeep but also in bone stock, brand new four wheel drives, I would've never managed to get the SEE into (and back out of) some of the situations it's been in. Okay, okay, there was one complete fail where it had to be towed out of a stuck, but I haven't laid it on its side yet.
You know where this is going, Bison. Most all of that four wheeling was done slowly.
I was forced to slow down since I couldn't afford to keep repairing the damage to my Jeep that inevitably resulted when going fast. An added bonus was that it could go places I didn't think were possible. Well, it would've been truly impossible to drive those trails fast.
I think that once you learn to slow down, you'll save time.

 

[BigBison]

Right, I'm exactly the same, figuring this out as I go along, helps to debate/argue/vent or just discuss because there's just nobody else out there to ask questions of, so we're on our own! Yeah, a telehandler is a cool piece of gear that's way better than the HMMH forklift, but one thing it can't do, is basically the one thing I've done with my HMMH forklift.

Forget about driving the HMMH, the other big deal with the lockout is using it to level the truck for crane operation. With the lockout (working) on my HMMH, this is a one-man operation, but only because I can drop the front suspension down after setting up the front jacks. Helps to have the truck nose-up a bit, because obviously the rear jacks/outriggers only lift. I can think of plenty of other ways to get the HMMH level, with a helper, or just not care if I'm on level pavement. By myself, off-pavement, I need the front suspension to lower, not just lock, especially if I'm pinning different holes from one side to the other like if there's a side-hill...

I don't need the forklift right now, I need the crane and I don't have much choice where to park it. I've been delving into the lockout mechanism so I can level the truck by myself, to run the crane when my help shows up. The HMMH hasn't moved in days, it's sitting there ready for the crane job I have for it, but I need to drop & lock the front suspension in order to level it. Otherwise, when I hoist, the front end will settle onto the jack pads -- leveling the crane while it hoists from un-level, which doesn't sound very sound.

Tomorrow's task is topping up the fluid in the lockout, so I can level the HMMH and hopefully accomplish that little tiny hoist that's needed doing for 10 days. Yeah, I'd rather wait and get it right, than f*** around repositioning the truck and grabbing some 2x6 planks and involving another person in leveling the truck, when all I really need to do is flip a switch and get that suspension-lockout pump to run for 30 seconds right where it's sitting with the rear outriggers deployed, good to go. Anyway, that's why I'm dwelling on the lockout issue despite it's over a week since I've needed a forklift for anything... still willing to rip it out & start over with some other concept, so long as I can still level the truck myself for crane operations!

 

[BigBison]

According to the manual, I screwed up when I was forklifting with the HMMH by having it in 2WD. So there's also that to consider for next time, while debating it endlessly until then!

 

[BigBison]

The well-drilling truck had front hydraulic jacks, with rear hydraulic outrigger/jacks. They set it up nose-high, then lifted the nose further to put some planks under the front downhill wheel, before lowering the nose back down, to bring the front axle level. Then they deployed the rear jacks, the downhill outrigger only came out halfway -- any further and it wouldn't have been able to go down far enough. When level, all 4 rear wheels on the downhill side of their truck, were dangling. They didn't chock those up with planks, just the one steer wheel. Like the HMMH, their truck's front wheels are outboard of the jacks, so the front downhill wheel is important to chock when dealing with a sidehill, for overall stability. The rear wheels are inboard of the rear outrigger jacks, so they apparently contribute nothing to the stability of the deployed platform.

The drillers had 40 years of experience, so yeah I paid attention and asked questions when they leveled their truck. I would think if the truck's gonna hafta be that off-kilter, find a more level spot to drill? I wish my camera worked (had power), I woulda taken a pic to post, looked pretty extreme for that big a truck with a big thing extending skyward at the rear, to be set up like that. Glad I saw it done firsthand!

My HMMH has been sitting for days with both rear wheels about 1" off the ground, the left-rear jack's all the way down. The left-front wheel's on a length of 2x6, which I wouldn't have done if I hadn't seen that drill truck last week. As my front jacks aren't hydraulic, all I need is some sort of suspension lockout thingy and the HMMH can be leveled a whole lot easier off-road...

 

[The FLU farm]

Forget about driving the HMMH, the other big deal with the lockout is using it to level the truck for crane operation. With the lockout (working) on my HMMH, this is a one-man operation, but only because I can drop the front suspension down after setting up the front jacks. Helps to have the truck nose-up a bit, because obviously the rear jacks/outriggers only lift. I can think of plenty of other ways to get the HMMH level, with a helper, or just not care if I'm on level pavement. By myself, off-pavement, I need the front suspension to lower, not just lock, especially if I'm pinning different holes from one side to the other like if there's a side-hill...

I don't need the forklift right now, I need the crane and I don't have much choice where to park it. I've been delving into the lockout mechanism so I can level the truck by myself, to run the crane when my help shows up. The HMMH hasn't moved in days, it's sitting there ready for the crane job I have for it, but I need to drop & lock the front suspension in order to level it. Otherwise, when I hoist, the front end will settle onto the jack pads -- leveling the crane while it hoists from un-level, which doesn't sound very sound.

Since my lockout doesn't lower, just locks, I hadn't considered using that feature to plant the front jacks firmly. And I've only used the front jacks once, and that was when using the forklift for a straight lift. Fearing that I'd put way too much force on the front axle with that very heavy lift, dropping the jacks seemed like a good idea.

But if I would want/need to use the front jacks for crane operation, here's what I'd do:
Drop the front jacks, then deploy the crane.
Extend the crane out, with some weight if necessary, which will lift the front.
If one side needs to come up some more, I'd swing the crane to the opposite side until the pin could be inserted in that jack.
Repeat as necessary.

I'm definitely not a crane operator, and not saying that it would work, but that's what I'd try. It's simple physics, so chances are good that it would.
Also, I've used the backhoe in a similar fashion to shift weight to where it's needed. Working alone 99.9% of the time, I always look for the easiest way to accomplish something without help, letting physics and machinery do the majority of the work for me. Try it, you might like it.

 

[The FLU farm]

As my front jacks aren't hydraulic, all I need is some sort of suspension lockout thingy and the HMMH can be leveled a whole lot easier off-road...

Another thought just emerged from my brain cell.
It would be very easy to make those front jacks hydraulic. Maybe you could get that done quicker than fixing the existing, or making a front lockout system?

 

[MSMOG]

My impression was that the seller had zero experience selling on eBay and likely had a younger family member create the listing. I emailed him multiple times and couldn't even get a response. Judging by the pics, it's obviously a very successful farming operation, so I doubt they needed to sell it. I'm guessing the seller made a connection with someone and they came to a mutually agreeable price (in excess of the opening bid). Might have been more important to find it a good home then get maximum dollar for it.

 

[General Hood]

My impression was that the seller had zero experience selling on eBay and likely had a younger family member create the listing. I emailed him multiple times and couldn't even get a response. Judging by the pics, it's obviously a very successful farming operation, so I doubt they needed to sell it. I'm guessing the seller made a connection with someone and they came to a mutually agreeable price (in excess of the opening bid). Might have been more important to find it a good home then get maximum dollar for it.

I agree, I would have loved to of had that trencher added to my collection, but I would have had to wait for the 50% off Black Friday sale, then ask for a senior discount to boot. My hat is off to the lucky one, whatever the price paid

 

[The FLU farm]

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[Mark1954]

What could possibly go wrong?View attachment 654927

looks a lot more high-tech than most of my efforts.

 

[The FLU farm]

looks a lot more high-tech than most of my efforts.

It was the low tech part that made me chicken out, Mark. I absolutely hate being on ladders, so when getting to the part where it was 14 feet to the concrete below, on a wobbly ladder, I gave up.
Last night a new plan was hatched, and the next attempt will involve two tractors with pallet forks and the HMMH. Hydraulics I trust, ladders not so much.

 

[Another Ahab]

It was the low tech part that made me chicken out, Mark. I absolutely hate being on ladders, so when getting to the part where it was 14 feet to the concrete below, on a wobbly ladder, I gave up.
Last night a new plan was hatched, and the next attempt will involve two tractors with pallet forks and the HMMH. Hydraulics I trust, ladders not so much.

Any underwriter will tell you:

- It's smart to hate climbing ladders; that's where most accidents start (I'm pretty sure the highest percentage of accidents are falls).

I used to work for an 800-pound Gorilla General Contractor, a company called J.A. Jones out of Charlotte. The worst two accidents the company ever had on record were two separate incidents of company executives falling off of a ladder while doing "honey-do's" at home over the weekend.

I kid you not.

 

[Mark1954]

It was the low tech part that made me chicken out, Mark. I absolutely hate being on ladders, so when getting to the part where it was 14 feet to the concrete below, on a wobbly ladder, I gave up.
Last night a new plan was hatched, and the next attempt will involve two tractors with pallet forks and the HMMH. Hydraulics I trust, ladders not so much.

I LOVE ladders - especially when they are in storage. I hate falling, I hate hanging while the ladder is placed back under you, I hate avoiding falling materials while hanging waiting for the ladder, etc. but sometimes they are just necessary. I agree on hydraulics - could fail, but slower and more predictable damage path, and you shouldn't be in a position to be hurt if they do.

Then again, maybe hydraulics are like 4WD, let's you get in much more trouble before it goes sideways.

 

[Migginsbros]

We use a fenced box

secured with a tie down , not a HMME (yet) but the famous, once fastest offroad forklift of the 80th. Our new box has actually pockets for the forks, that give you an extra savety.

 

[The FLU farm]

Then again, maybe hydraulics are like 4WD, let's you get in much more trouble before it goes sideways.

Mark, there's a reason I always use 2WD until it'll go no more. It's nice to have a backup. It also forces me to be a better driver.
Then again, I have wore out a fairlead or two, winching myself out of (and even into) trouble.

I really like the idea of having a fenced platform, as suggested by the Miggins brothers, but I'd still need a ladder to get in and out of it. Yeah, there are times when working alone is a bit sucky.

 

[General Hood]

What could possibly go wrong?View attachment 654927

Walking around that roof looking for the best place to jump, once that Midwest wind blows your ladder over would suck. Better go with the hydraulics my friend. BTW, how many SEEs can fit under a FLU Farm awning?

 

[Another Ahab]

Walking around that roof looking for the best place to jump, once that Midwest wind blows your ladder over would suck. Better go with the hydraulics my friend. BTW, how many SEEs can fit under a FLU Farm awning?

Is this a trick question, or the words to a limerick or something?!