Gehl Adapter Guide: Mounting Ears, Plates & Converters

Gehl skid steers run a mounting system that doesn't match the universal skid steer quick-attach pattern most manufacturers build to. That's fine until you go shopping for a new attachment and realize half the market won't bolt up to your machine without help. This is where mounting ears, blank plates, and full-size adapters come in — three different pieces of hardware that solve three different problems.

Get the wrong one and you'll either overspend or end up with an attachment that doesn't fit right. Here's how to sort it out.

Start With What Your Machine Actually Needs

Before you buy anything, figure out whether your Gehl is missing hardware entirely, needs a bolt-on adapter, or just needs to talk to a different attachment universe. Those are three separate fixes.

Mounting Ears: Replacing Missing or Damaged Hardware

If your Gehl loader is missing its mounting ears — or the factory ones are cracked, bent, or worn out from years of attachment swaps — you need a direct replacement, not a workaround. Mounting ears are the actual brackets that let the quick-attach lever grab and hold an attachment. Without them, or with damaged ones, nothing locks up tight and you get play at the pins.

SmithCustomz builds a Gehl Skid Steer Mounting Ears (4-Piece Set) for the 4525, 4625, 5620, 5625, 6620, and 6625 models. It's a direct bolt-on replacement — no cutting, no custom fab work, no guessing on hole spacing. If your current ears are rusted through or a previous owner ran the machine with a bent bracket, this is the straightforward fix.

How do you know your ears are shot? Walk up to a mounted attachment and rock it side to side. If you get noticeable movement at the coupler, or the attachment shifts when you're digging into a pile, the ears (or the pins) have worn past where they should be. Cracks near the weld points or elongated pin holes are the other giveaway. Don't run it like that — a mounting ear that lets go under load is how attachments end up on the ground mid-job.

The Blank Plate Option: Building Your Own Mount

Not every job calls for an off-the-shelf adapter. If you're fabricating a custom attachment, mounting a piece of equipment that was never designed for a skid steer coupler, or building something one-off for a specific application, a blank mounting plate gives you a clean starting point.

A blank plate is exactly what it sounds like — a Gehl-pattern mounting plate with no attachment hardware welded to it yet. You get the correct coupler geometry to match your loader, and then you weld your own frame, bucket, or custom tooling to it. This is the route a lot of contractors and welding shops take when they're building something that doesn't exist in any catalog: a custom trencher mount, a specialty fork frame, a one-off grapple built around material they already have on hand.

If you're running a fab shop or you've got a welder and a project that needs a Gehl-compatible mount from scratch, this is worth asking about before you spend hours cutting your own coupler plate from flat stock and guessing at tolerances. Getting the pattern right the first time saves you from an attachment that almost fits.

Full-Size Adapters: Accessing the Universal Attachment Market

Here's the real limitation Gehl owners run into: the universal skid steer attachment market — buckets, grapples, augers, brush cutters, pallet forks, you name it — is built around the standard full-size quick-attach pattern. Gehl's factory mount doesn't match it. That means a huge chunk of attachments on the market simply won't bolt up to a Gehl loader without a converter in between.

That's the whole reason the Gehl to Full Size Skid Steer Adapter exists. It bolts to your Gehl's factory coupler on one side and gives you a standard full-size quick-attach face on the other. Once it's on, you're no longer shopping in a narrow lane — you can run attachments built for Bobcat, Case, Deere, Kubota, and every other brand running the universal pattern.

This matters most if you:

• Rent attachments regularly and want access to whatever the rental yard has in stock, not just Gehl-specific pieces
• Run a mixed fleet with other full-size skid steers and want one attachment set that works across all of them
• Already own full-size attachments from a previous machine and don't want to sell them off just because you switched to a Gehl
• Are shopping for a specialty attachment — a stump grinder, a tree spade, a rock saw — and the only options on the market are built for the universal pattern

It's one bolt-on piece of hardware standing between a limited attachment lineup and the entire universal market. For a lot of Gehl owners, that adapter pays for itself the first time they need an attachment their local dealer doesn't stock in the Gehl pattern.

Running a Different Brand? Same Problem, Same Fix

Gehl isn't the only manufacturer with a mounting pattern that sits outside the universal standard. ASV and Terex machines run into the same wall — plenty of attachments that just won't fit without a converter. If that's your machine, the ASV / Terex to Full Size Skid Steer Adapter solves it the same way the Gehl adapter does: bolt it to your factory mount and get a standard full-size face to work with.

Picking the Right Piece

Match the hardware to the actual problem:

• Cracked, bent, or missing coupler brackets — replace with a direct-fit mounting ear set
• Building a custom attachment from scratch — start with a blank plate and weld your own design to it
• Locked out of the universal attachment market — run a full-size adapter and open up everything else

All of this hardware is designed and built in the USA, machined to hold up to real daily use — not just bolt on and look right in a photo. Check your current mounting ears for play before your next attachment swap, and if you're still shopping Gehl-only attachments because you didn't know a full-size adapter existed, that's the fix worth looking at first.