Hugh's offset 3pt conversion

Hugh,

Could you repost the pictures of that 3pt conversion you did on the fast hitch of one of your offsets? As I recall the arms attach to the fast hitch bail, correct?

My mind was racing the other night, coming up with neat new projects to tackle, and I was thinking maybe I could come up with a CAT 0 version for a Cub, based off your design.

MKirsch: No problem, here are couple of photos. Send me an e mail, I'm not sure I can post more than one on here. My hitch is all Cat I.

Thanks Hugh. That's gotta be the best 3pt conversion I've seen for an offset. When I get home I'll send you an email.

MKirsch: I got an e mail from a New Englander couple days back, and his first reaction, "Why didn't I think of that in the past 45 years?" I responded by telling him it took me 45 years. Bear in mind I didn't have lot of time to put into the hitch until I retired.

I built my first hitch on my 130 in the mid 1960s to operate a Deere 246 corn planter. At that time I used same basic design as Worksaver, with lower links hooked directly to final drive. Those lower links were about 6" shorter than the 32" ones I'm using today. It was very difficult to lift the planter loaded with seed and fertilizer. The biggest problem was getting the corn planter to trail centered on tractor, lower links too close to parallel. When I set the top link to control depth of corn planter, the planter would flop to one side or the other and not trail true. I'd have a 20" row on one side, 30" in middle and 40" on the other side. Very quickly I found a fast hitch fork and almost as quickly some fabrication and a one point fast hitch Deere corn planter.

This never mattered much when I was farming. Over the years I built a couple other devices which plugged into fast hitch and would hook to a 3 point hitch implement. Problem with most of those, weight was too far from tractor.

Back about 4 years ago I lugged home a MF-25 disk with 24-18" blades. I thought about converting it to fast hitch, decided I'd ruin a good 3 point disk. That is when I decided on this hitch. There were a few design ideas went to the scrap pile. Finally a hitch that would lift that 1,000# disk, and I could pull it if I didn't get too vicious on angle of cut. It took the hydraulics very close to their limit, wasn't something I wanted to use long term. I sold that disk and bought a 20 blade, 18" blades, bit lighter as well. One item I've discovered, my 130 and 140 each lift more weight via 3 point than 1 point.