Craftsman  Front Tractor Scoop

Good for moving around small amounts of dirt, but just as quick to do it yourself and a wheelbarrow. Doesn't lift very high and makes the mower unstable. It's more a function of the mower already not very good at traction/tipping etc. Big, heavy thing to store when not in use

didn't have all the bolts and nuts and I'm going to have to get the weight to put in it because it wants to tip over - other than that I'm happy.

I've owned this scoop attachment for about 6 years, and it has worked great. After getting the adjustments right, it works as expected and more. It has been outside the whole six years and still looks new. I added a piece of chain on front, to keep bucket from tilting too far forward, and this scoop does good spreading and leveling the lawn soil, and makes as a good caddy to ferry lawn supplies around. I recommend wheel weights and chains to make this work better. Keeping the working parts and cables oiled, has helped it stay working for so long, without any other maintainance.

Used this item of and on for three years, finely parked it. Constantly adjusting the bucket lock. Unit is very hard to use the handles. Not enough ground clearance. Way over priced for the engineering involved. Small plastic grips will not stay on.

This scoop went back to Sears 4 days ago, attached to the not so good tractor I bought with it. I intend to purchase one of these again soon and attach it to my old, good unit. (Hopefully) I have no choice. There's nothing else out there but this one.

So far I've been happy with the tractor scoop, haven't moved any rock yet but it does a great job on dirt, grass clippings and mulch. Assembly took about 2.5 to 3 hours, the key is to lay all the loose parts on a large piece of cardboard and label each part with its corresponding letter from the manual. It takes a little time on the front end but based on other reviews saves you a lot of time looking for the right part. Craftsman could save a lot of frustration if they individually packaged and labeled the small parts. One negative seems to be the scoop tilt lock, it requires constant adjustment to function properly. On the other hand, I have a very bad back and this allows me to do yard work I would have to pay someone else to do, If you have less than 5 acres and an average amount of yard work or landscaping projects this is a great value. As far as posting reviews, your website sucks!

Mine was a floor model and already assembled. Well, after getting it home and in the shop, I treated it like it was not ever assembled and went through every step of the assembly double checking their assembly. Good thing I did, one bracket was upside down and another was on backwards and another was bent. Two nuts were missing and two bolts, nuts, and washers were missing. Fortunately, I had extra nuts and bolts in my shop that were the right size. I got the two brackets reassembled the correct way and straighted the bent one. Finally, it was assembled and on the tractor. It worked great and with not too much effort to lift when full of dirt. It tilted perfectly.

I recently purchased your front tractor scoop when I purchase a new 26HP, 54" lawn tractor. When the service representative called me to ask if I wanted the tractor to be delivered with the bumper on the front or the scoop, I can now understand why he sounded relieved when I said the bumper. I mounted the scoop this past weekend to do some yard clean up. I should send you pictures of my bloody hands from intalling the side plates on the tractor to mount the scoop. It's ridiculous. C'mon guys, this is 2011 and by now you should have engineered a way to connect these attachments without putting the customer at risk, nor requiring more than about 10 minutes time.

I do not recommend the purchase of this product. It's dangerous.

I've had this for just over a year. It's design fails in strength, as I've had many parts break, bend and go out of adjustment far too often. If you only use it to move wood chips or grass clipping, you might be OK. If you try to move anything approaching it's claimed weight capacity, you are in trouble.

The tilt anchor assembly and lift frame assembly have all bent. I've had to replace the dump cable twice. The welds on the index bracket assembly failed and broke. The dump control pin and tilt bracket are always difficult to set and they just don't stay in the right position. The lift strap assemblies slip out of adjustment often. All these parts are real expensive.

I feel like I rented this equipment and have to keep on paying to use it. I've mainly use it to move dirt that was excavated out when my driveway was put in. I don't think this was engineered with enough strength in the load bearing parts. The idea is good, but it just isn't strong enough. Unfortunately it's the only on available for these tractors, so we are stuck using this weak tractor scoop.

I researched the Craftsman front scoop attachment for a year or more before I bought it. And I was still quite skeptical but I bought it at a price which convinced me I could afford to take the chance. I'm not sorry I did.

For me, it was a little more challenging and frustrating to assemble than either the 42" Craftsman Snow Blade or the 42" Craftsman Snow Blower. But that was probably my fault. I had downloaded and thoroughly studied the assembly instructions for both of them before receiving them. I didn't do that with the scoop. So trying to assemble on the first reading of the assembly instructions didn't go as well as it might have with a little more preparation. But I did get it done and it only took a couple of hours to assemble and mount. And I didn't have to do too much "do over" and readjustment on the first usage.

I did have some trouble figuring out the proper adjustments for the bucket pin latch. Given how many others have had problems with this, I don't think that was entirely my fault. So Craftsman lost a star for not making the installation and adjustment of that crucial piece of hardware easier to understand and accomplish. I think I finally got it right during the second day of usage. At least it's now staying where I put it and working as it should. And, although tempted, I didn't weld it to make that happen, as I've read that some did. So I don't think that the problems I've read about with the pin latch are caused so much by a design flaw as much as by a failure of the instruction manual writers to make things clear for assemblers and operators.

Also, I don't disagree that this part of the attachment could use some fine tuning so that it would work without the lift being in the locked up position. I've got some ideas about that which I plan to work on a little later when I get some time. I think a little modification to the design could make it work more effectively and make it a more capable digger. We'll see.

And I'll agree with the folks who think that somebody needs to come up with a mounting bracket design which will take all front mounted attachments. It's only an 8 bolt changeover on my tractor to switch tractor brackets. But having to do that every time to change front attachments kind of makes that claim of "easy-on, easy-off" somewhat of an unnecessary joke which should be easy to fix.

Limitations and design flaws aside, initial usage has been rather impressive. I started off with some light use to get used to working things and get through the learning curve. And then I put it to work helping to cut and build a trail across my mountain property that I've been working on. This trail will be used to give my Craftsman tractor and its dump cart access to more of this steep wooded property so the damage from from the Christmas 2009 ice storm on that part of the mountain can be cleaned up and the mountain side property can be better maintained. Then my mountain biker friends and I plan to use it for more fun things like mountain biking and hiking. After a half day of usage cutting a 5'-6' wide section of trail across a steep section of the mountainside, I'm quite impressed. I didn't buy the scoop thinking that it could handle work like that. I rather thought that it might be of some help in distributing gravel on the trail after construction was mostly complete. But so far it's doing a rather impressive job of helping with the initial excavation and construction. Light excavation and material moving takes a bit more forethought and planning than one would need if using a full fledged mini front end loader or mini excavator. But if you plan it right, it can handle it. Or at least it has so far. And it probably does it just about as well as any front end loader which is small enough to use on these trails would do it. Hopefully, using its surprising capabilities will help keep down the costs of renting the mini excavator which I was planning to use to get this job finished. Substituting it for a rented excavator has probably already paid for the scoop. The savings will almost certainly pay for the entire Craftsman tractor which it is attached to before I finish the trail. And, unlike with the rented excavator, I'll still have this equipment to use on future projects.

So . . . I'm once again both pleasantly surprised and happy. Even amazed. What more can I say?