Arkaybee
Silver Member
Row-croppers, how about sharing a little of your expertise:
Bought a large used cat II field cultivator 14 feet wide, double 2 1/4 inch diamond tool bar with ties and large 15 inch screw-adjustable gauge wheels. I cut one bar in half (two pieces 7 ft long) put them together with two of the four ties to make a tool to fit my cat I JD 850 (ca 25 hp). I like the way the tool works and the four shanks are easily adjusted left and right on the bars. These shanks are tall and that gives good clearance of the crop but it also means that it doesn't have a lot of ground-clearance when lifted and traveling from place to place but it is adequate if I don't forget to ensure that it is lifted all the way. It is a heavy beast for my tractor but I don't have to add any more weight to make it bite:laughing:. It tends to make the front end want to come up if I lift it too quickly
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The shanks are very heavy duty and by changing points or blades I can use it as a ripper (have to determine how many shanks my machine will pull) or subsoiler. To do that I will almost certainly need some gauge wheels to control the depth since my tractor cannot handle much depth all at once and I would probably need to make more than one pass in the same slot.
The problem is that the gauge wheels are massive for my machine and the spindles of the wheels are very worn. Do you think I could cut off those spindles and weld on new ones for smaller wheels? I am not sure that there is room for this large gauge wheel to run behind the tractor in the tractor wheel track followed by a cultivator shank (e.g. when cultivating; but wouldn't need a shank behind the wheel when ripping with one or two rippers).
OR-- would it be a better choice to get a straight vertical shank gauge wheel of smaller diameter with flotation tire? This would lighten the load since the tool is already very heavy.
I would like to find some used row-crop tools to choose from but these are hard to find in the NW corner of Louisiana.
I have looked at some vendors new products on the net but haven't found a lot of choices and haven't had much luck on Ebay either. Maybe my searching skills are poor.
Arkaybee
Bought a large used cat II field cultivator 14 feet wide, double 2 1/4 inch diamond tool bar with ties and large 15 inch screw-adjustable gauge wheels. I cut one bar in half (two pieces 7 ft long) put them together with two of the four ties to make a tool to fit my cat I JD 850 (ca 25 hp). I like the way the tool works and the four shanks are easily adjusted left and right on the bars. These shanks are tall and that gives good clearance of the crop but it also means that it doesn't have a lot of ground-clearance when lifted and traveling from place to place but it is adequate if I don't forget to ensure that it is lifted all the way. It is a heavy beast for my tractor but I don't have to add any more weight to make it bite:laughing:. It tends to make the front end want to come up if I lift it too quickly
.The shanks are very heavy duty and by changing points or blades I can use it as a ripper (have to determine how many shanks my machine will pull) or subsoiler. To do that I will almost certainly need some gauge wheels to control the depth since my tractor cannot handle much depth all at once and I would probably need to make more than one pass in the same slot.
The problem is that the gauge wheels are massive for my machine and the spindles of the wheels are very worn. Do you think I could cut off those spindles and weld on new ones for smaller wheels? I am not sure that there is room for this large gauge wheel to run behind the tractor in the tractor wheel track followed by a cultivator shank (e.g. when cultivating; but wouldn't need a shank behind the wheel when ripping with one or two rippers).
OR-- would it be a better choice to get a straight vertical shank gauge wheel of smaller diameter with flotation tire? This would lighten the load since the tool is already very heavy.
I would like to find some used row-crop tools to choose from but these are hard to find in the NW corner of Louisiana.
I have looked at some vendors new products on the net but haven't found a lot of choices and haven't had much luck on Ebay either. Maybe my searching skills are poor.
Arkaybee
