WORKSHOP: Wobbling tines on a bale spike or muck fork will eventually wear the bushes. If you want to restore that tight fit, then weld-in sleeves are one workshop solution.
Loose tines can’t pierce a bale properly, or on a silage grab they can tear at the clamp face. In fact, when they are really bad, you can possibly snap a tine. Most of the time, retightening the tines will get you out of trouble, but, if you haven’t done this soon enough, the bushes can become so worn that no amount of tightening is going to fix things. In such a scenario you can weld new sleeves into the worn holes or replace the existing sleeves.
Choice of tine holders
First, take a look at the type of tine holder that is currently fitted. Many bale spikes have factory-fitted sleeves. If these are worn, you can cut them out with a grinder, remove and replace with a new bush. Older or cheaper forks usually have just a tube to act as the tine holder, which has countersunk holes for the cone nuts that secure the tines. These types tend to fail sooner than a proper conical sleeve. This was also the case with our bucket where
the two holes in the middle were very badly worn. The two outer tines had already been fitted with sleeves, so we only had to replace the tines, which then helped with aligning the rest of the sleeves as you can see on the next page.
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