fast hitch ponderings

Thanks for the input

I'm no engineer, but I would guess that from their viewpoint, the 2-point hitch had gone just about as far as it could go in terms of stability and capacity.

Not at the tractor, of the implement.

If you look at some of the 'bigger' stuff of the day, like the four row cultivators or the bigger plows, you can readily see why the 2-point had just about come to the end of its run.

It was starting to take quite a bit of ironwork in the hitching arrangement of the these implements just to keep the thing 'lifting' on a somewhat parallel axis to the tractor.

It just made more sense to add a center link at the tractor than piling on more and more iron into that implement hitch to make it strong enough to withstand the load forces.

My take anyway,

Allan

The fasth hitch is too danged complex, too. My brother recently repainted his 400 and had all the fast hitch pieces strung all over the place while cleaning and painting them. There were arms, frames, brackets, rods, clips, cylinders, hoses, pivot joints (and probably a dead cat if you looked hard enough), bell cranks and what not--enough to make your head spin. Probably 500# worth of stuff. Looking at all that damnation and thinking about how Ferguson accomplished the same thing with 50# worth of stuff only makes me ask.... WHY?

LOL!!!

Yep, hear ya there. I hated it when we had to switch over to the 3-point rigs..... ....for about 20 minutes.

Didn't take long to figure out that the old 2-pointer was lacking big time and we just never looked back or gave the 2-point another thought.

Even using those little adaptors was a major PITA! :>)

Thanks for the hollar,

Allan

Why they didn't stay around, IH wouldn't make any deals on selling rights to other companies, and farmers reacted by wanting equipment with a standard hitch. Truth is Harry Ferguson had won the hitch war before IH sold it's first fast hitch.

By far the best answer. Draw bar issue was taken care by the addition of the fixed hitch. The snap coupler was another fairly good idea that faded away as three point became the standard.

Where the problem came was big tractors pulling heavy pull type equipment. I had a 560D, and pulled items like 4 bottom trailer plow, 10 ft disk, 13 foot vibra shank cultivator and forage harvester or baler with wagon. In about three years that hitch was almost like pulling those implements with a 4 foot chain. Not really the ideal situation with pto equipment. Interesting part is once the hitch was rebuilt, it only seemed to last about 1 year and would need rebuilding again.