"Long Reach" Front-Mounted Sickle Mower

"Long Reach" Front-Mounted Sickle Mower MOWERS Mowers (31H) 23-1-17 "It works great to cut brush and grass along roadsides. The driver has a great view and never has to look back," says Fraser Moore, Huntingdon, Quebec. He recently sent FARM SHOW photos of a 9-ft. long New Holland sicklebar mounted on a hydraulic-powered, pivoting boom on front of an IH 2-WD tractor. Moore is the road supervisor for a local municipality that had been using the tractor equipped with a front mount, pto-driven snowblower and a front-end loader that was used to load road salt into trucks. A drive train extended from the pto and ran under the tractor and up to the snowblower. They were also using a 3-pt. sicklebar mower. However, the mower was difficult to operate because the driver always had to look back. To solve the problem they made a steel carrying frame on front of the tractor allowing them to mount the mower on front. The mower is chain-driven off the existing snowblower drive train. They bought a 3-pt., pto-driven McConnell boom mower equipped with a 4-ft. long flail-type cutter head designed to remove brush from roadsides. A home-built adapter allows the boom mower to be mounted on the same carrying frame that supports the snowblower and sicklebar mower. They also made an adapter that allows them to replace the cutter head with the New Holland sicklebar. "It's a very versatile system that lets one tractor do more than one job, resulting in big cost savings," says Moore. "The snowblower drive train always stays with the tractor, even during the summer. It takes only about 10 minutes to switch from the mower to the snowblower or loader. It takes about a half hour to switch from the flail head to the sicklebar. "The mower boom pivots at two points and can reach out up to 18 ft. to cut road sides or to trim low-hanging branches. Both the sicklebar and flail head can be used in either the vertical or horizontal position. The sicklebar can be used to cut off branches up to 1 1/2 inches in diameter. The flail head works great for hammering brush up to 4 inches in diameter." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Fraser Moore, 93 Kelly Ave., Huntingdon, Quebec, Canada J0S 1H0 (ph 450 264-3259).

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