Transport Frame Makes Handling Big Augers Easy AUGERS Augers (29B) 25-2-4 Howard Ailsby never liked moving grain augers by hand. Even hooked to a tractor, backing up was a chore. To solve the problem, he built a transport frame that hitches to the side of the tractor. It worked so well the Wymark, Saskatchewan, grain farmer built three more, including two for his neighbors. The auger carrier attaches to the right side of a tractor in two places: with a pin in the drawbar, and on a ball hitch bolted to the front of the tractor. Two pivoting caster wheels allow it to freely follow the tractor. Backing the auger into place is no more difficult now than backing the tractor. He used rectangular steel tubing to build the frame. Because it's not fastened solid to the tractor, the carrier flexes over ruts and bumps without damage to the carrier or the auger itself. The tractor is positioned midway on the auger tube, so he can use the auger both for filling and emptying bins. The original auger undercarriage and auger lift mechanisms remain in place. Ailsby simply removes the original axle and mounts everything else on his auger carrier. A tongue jack mounts on the tractor side of the frame for use when the auger carrier is off the tractor. To drive pto-driven augers, he sets up a right angle 1:1 gearbox at the far left of his cart, directly behind the tractor pto. He adds a 2-in. hydraulic cylinder with a 48-in. stroke to raise or lower the bottom end of the auger. "Today's tractors really have more powerful hydraulics than you need for an auger. If you're not careful, you can bend the auger tube when you're raising it up, especially if the lower end happens to be buried in a grain pile," he says. To avoid putting too much lift on the auger, he put restricters in the hydraulic line between the tractor and the cylinder. And he put a by-pass in the line at the top of the cylinder that opens when pressure is too great. He also put a splitter in the hydraulic line on the auger carrier and added a hydraulic outlet there. This allows him to use a hydraulically powered bin sweep auger when he's loading trucks. Ailsby says if he were building another, he'd probably use a geared down hydraulic winch instead of the cylinder to raise the lower end of the auger. He says his goal was to make something that wasn't permanently attached to the tractor, but could be hooked up easily. "It takes less than 5 minutes to hook up or take off," he says. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Howard Ailsby, RR1, Wymark, Sask., Canada S0N 2Y0 (ph 306 627-3493)

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