Chet
Silver Member
After much sweating in the sun, I decided shade would be a good thing! I just could not choke down the $300+ cost of a hard cover. Plus I wanted something easy to remove, as I have to brushhog under and around a bunch of trees on occasion. After mulling it over for awhile I decided I had enough rebar and assorted steel scraps to engineer a canopy structure. As you can see, it ain't fancy, but it cost less than ten dollars to build and it is quickly removable, due to the convenient pin locations already on the tractor. The front supports are 51 inches high from the pin to the top. The rear supports are 18 inches high from the rops pin to the top. The horizontal section from front to back is about 60 inches. The piece of notched angle across the front is 40 inches long. The shade generator is an old single fitted sheet tied on with parachute cord. Makes good shade, but structure does waggle back and forth some, depending on travelled surface. I usually just grab the horizontal peice with my free hand to settle it down. Also wrapped a peice of inner tube around the FEL hyd lines to prevent chaffing agains them. Assembly was mostly great guess work on the initial dimensions. After making the front and rear vertical members, I clamped them in place on the tractor and then welded the top horizontal member on, laid the whole thing on the shop floor, reinforced the corners and then made a duplicate for the other side. I did not go above the ROPS because it just barely fits in the tractor shed as it is. Chet PS this is a Mahindra 4500 4WD.
