I am hoping someone can tell me I am not going mad.
My firm has recently taken delivery of some flexi/bendi type of forklift trucks. These have a pantograph/scissor type of attachment for double depth racking, which will not extend unless the machine is at 45degree plus angle to ensure there is enough weight behind the front wheels to lift safely (it could topple over if it was at 90 degrees).
My issue is that having felt the truck go light when retrieving a load at full extension 8.4M up, I started to have major doubts. The capacity plate has basic errors on it and wasn’t much help, so I bypassed the management and got some data from the manufacturer:-
Height Retracted Extended Percentage
5.03 1364 1206 88
5.33 1364 1186 86
6.10 1364 1136 83
6.55 1364 1092 80
6.86 1364 1063 77
7.62 1136 989 87
8.38 977 915 93
9.30 841 827 98
9.91 750 750 100
10.80 682 682 100
I can see that the capacity (retracted) up to 6.86M is down to the limit of the hydraulics (1364kg), but I cannot see how the limits when extended improve the higher up you go, and I cannot see how the hell the limits at 9.91 and 10.80 are identical for retracted and extended!
This goes against everything I understand about forklifts; the higher you go the more unstable things get, and the further you move the load centre forward the more unstable it gets. Things just don’t get better the higher up you go, but as I have a beef about these trucks and would like to prove they are crap, perhaps I am blind to something obvious?