DON, MIKE - On the self-leveling, not "Auto-leveling" like Tom Welborn has on his 982's loader, when you set the bucket flat, or dumped, or in whatever postion or angle, as you raise or lower the loader arms the bucket stays at that same angle even though the loader arms change angle as they are raised/lowered. If the bottom of the bucket is flat on the ground when lowered, it's still flat when fully raised.
DO NOT discount that advantage. Obviously you guys have never had a partial bucket of wet sloppy manure dumped on the hood & grill of your loader tractor right in front of you sitting on the seat, or a partial bucket of large crushed rock, because you tipped the bucket all the way back when you loaded it on the ground and as you raised it the bucket continued to tilt back to the point the material in the bucket fell out the back side or "TOP" of the bucket that is now flat and horizontal and would be considered the BACK. As you can see on Tom's loader, it adds some complexity and of course cost, but if you're going to be loading tall trucks, carts, wagons, etc it's a REQUIREMENT IMO. And since these CC loaders by design are low to the ground most of your loading jobs would be relatively high. Yes, you can accomplish the same thing with the bucket control valve but the self-leveling is MUCH smoother, and always works and allows you to use the control valve hand for something else like steering or speed/direction control.
DON - You're correct, large bore cyinders make more force and operate slower, smaller cylinders make less force and operate quicker. One of the most important features of a loader is the amount of "Break-out force" it generates when lifting a load off the ground. The geometry of the loader is working against you there unless you mount the back end of the lift arm cylinders as low as possible and mount the end attached to the arms as high and close to the bucket as possible. As the loader arms raise, the geometry changes and reduces the amount of lift force gradually, but then you don't want to carry heavy loads very high anyhow. That's a good way to set your tractor & loader on it's side.
Both my loaders on my FARMALL's are the manual trip bucket style like that Danco. The loader on the Super H is a Ford loader Dad bought as junk and modified to mount on the Super H similar to an IH 2000 or 2001 loader, quick attach/detach in about five minutes. The problem with the old FARMALL's is their hyd system only holds six quarts of oil and by the time you extend two 2-1/2" x 30 inch lift arm cylinders there's NO OIL left in the system to run any bucket cylinders. The loader on the Super H was even modified to have a bucket cylinder decades ago before Dad bought it and either he removed it or the prior owner did, you can see where the cylinder attachments were welded to the frame. But since I learned to run the Stan-Hoist loader on the M about fifty years ago I can normally make a trip bucket loader do anything I want. Having caught a face full of sloppy manure a time or two when loading manure I learned to set the bucket down on the side of the spreader and trip it, then raise the bucket a bit so it angled more and emptied, then back up and lower the bucket or arms and re-latch the bucket before backing away from the spreader. Saved a L-O-T of time, and the old JD spreader was built like a battleship and handled the weight of the bucket fine.
The neighbor I worked for had a Case 420 Construction King loader which was a good little loader, full hydraulic, but the Case 530 Construction King TLB I ran for the township was a Cadillac compared to anything I even ran. When loading the sand/chip spreader truck it was either 5 or 6 buckets was 22,000+#, I weighted a load once. And I could load that truck in two minutes. It had a forward/reverse shuttle shift and a torque converter I could shift into lock-up as required, was great for crowding the pile to get a heaping bucket every time. I set the hand throttle about half throttle and used the foot throttle for everything else.