chad from michigan - pic

Chad,

Here is a scan out of my 140 Operators manual showing the bail pinned under the platform like Hugh was talking about.

I was thinking too if you had to make that curved piece you might make it a little bigger and just drill a half inch hole in the end and bolt the depth adjusting link to it instead of the platform. That way you wouldnt have to remove anything. Wonder what Hugh thinks of that idea?

Randy: That is exactly what I was talking about, and the original IH intent was nothing more than pinning the hitch bail up so it would clear high crops during use of center and rear cultivators. Usually the pull bar would be removed during cultivation.

As I said before, we pinned it up there for clearence when raking hay. Problem is that attachment is loose, thus one got the hitch bail slamming on bottom of platform. What we built was a round shaft cross member on front of final drives with a tee off it of stock same size as the draft link. By using several holes we achived height adjustment of the hitch bail.

By raising hitch bail and rear hitch we could straddle quite large hay windrows, when turning hay. More clearence over a windrow of hay than any other tractor we had on the farm, including 300, 560 and 656. The other function we found it valuable was the tool bar cultivator in 3 - 20" rows of rutabagas. We had center two bar tool bars and rear two bar tool bars with depth gauge wheels. The rear mounted set were fast hitch mounted. If one left the draft link in place, it tilted the back bars as the center bars lowered. This made shanks on back tool bar lift out of soil. Thus the fixed setting at front of hitch bail was quite important.

I found problems also with draft link in place while using front blade. These blades are plenty heavy for this hydraulic system lift via the rockshafts. If you place a counter weight mounted in fast hitch, (could include any implement, fast hitch mounted) this adds to weight front hydraulics must lift. My blade is somewhat heavier than the factory blade, and if I leave the draft link in place with 500# counter weight on fast hitch, my hydraulics will not lift the blade.

Bear in mind my 130 hydraulics are in good working condition, I can lift a 1,000 disk on my fabricated 3 point hitch. Those front blades create quite a mechanical disadvantage for the hydraulics. In fact I say every year, before another snow season, I'm going to install a remote hydraulic valve and use a remote cylinder to lift the blade. Problem is I get too busy gardening, and before I know it snow is upon me. Like the snow we got Thurs. night into Fri., 24" and it fell straight down with no wind. I have a 30" diameter, upright cylinder propane tank 20' from any building. Snow on top of it formed a perfect 30" cylinder, 24" deep. I never saw anything like that previous in my lifetime. Also been a few 4x12 pitch roof's gone down in the neighborhood, too much snow load.