Tandem Hitch Lets Two Tractors Pull As One

Tandem Hitch Lets Two Tractors Pull As One HITCHES Hitches 26-4-4 Roy Ferguson, St. Joseph, Missouri, farms about 1,000 acres with a couple of Deere tractors as his main power units - a 4555 two-wheel drive and a 4250 front wheel assist. Neither of those tractors alone had the power to pull the 15-ft., 3-bar chisel plow he wanted to use. So he decided to build a hitch that would allow him to couple the tractors together and drive both at once. He started with a 15-ft. long, 5 by 7-in. toolbar off an old cultivator. At each end of the bar, he fastened 2-ft. lengths of 1/2-in. thick, 8-in. channel iron. "I could have welded it, but I was concerned welding might weaken the steel, so I bolted the channel iron to the tube with three 5/16-in. U-bolts," he says. This bar fastens to the drawbar on the 4555 and then runs forward under the tractor to the front axle. Then he mounted a 2 5/16-in. gooseneck ball socket on the front end of the toolbar hitch, with the socket facing down toward the ground. The idea was to carry the front end of the 4555 on the 3-point hitch of the 4250. So he made a bar to fit between the lift arms on the 4250 from 3/4-in. thick angle iron and put Category II pins on it. In the center, he added a pedestal made of a length of 4-in. square steel tubing. He welded a couple of ears at the top of this and drilled through them to make a bracket to pin the 3-point top link arm to it. "At the bottom of the pedestal, I added a tongue made from a 14-in. long, 6-in. wide strip of 1-in. plate steel. I drilled a hole in the back end of that and mounted the 2 5/16-in. ball on that," he says. Being able to pick up the front end of the 4555 with the 4250 allowed him to steer both tractors at once, but that was only half the job, Ferguson says. He also needed to be able to control the throttle, clutch, and 3-point hitch on the 4555 from the cab on the 4250. Since the 4555 has electric-over-hydraulic controls, he mounted a potentiometer like the one on the 4555 lift arms in the 4250 and hooked the two together with an extension cord. He put a solenoid fuel-shut off control on the 4555 and, using a different colored extension cord, connected that to a switch in the 4250. To engage or disengage the clutch on the 4555, he mounted a linear actuator on the foot pedal. "You can buy actuators with different inclines on the threads. This one is a fast-acting one. I connected it with an extension cord to a momentary switch in the 4250. The combination allows me to fully disengage the clutch in just two seconds," he says. A slower 6-in. linear actuator was attached to the throttle lever in the 4555, with a corresponding switch in the 4250 cab. Another extension cord connects the actuator and the switch. "I also put a linear actuator on the powershift lever in the 4555 cab, with a switch in the 4250. Both tractors have 15-speed powershifts and I hoped to be able to shift the back tractor as I shifted the front one. What I found was I couldn't easily tell which gear I was shifting into, so I don't do that. Instead, I just put the 4555 in the gear I need to use and leave it. I can turn at the end of the field using the 4250, so I just disengage the clutch on the 4555 before I begin to turn," he says. Ferguson used the two tractors for all his chiseling this past spring. "I chiseled 500 acres, averaging 10 acres an hour," he says. Turning around was the biggest challenge. "You definitely don't want to try that with a cell-phone in one hand," he admits. He says he did have one minor incident, after he'd chiseled between 300 and 400 acres. "I was trying to chisel as close to the field edge as possible, in order to have only a narrow headland to work. I guess I wasn't paying enough attention and I didn't get the clutch on the 4555 disengaged when I should have. As I turned, the back tractor pushed the front tractor sideways a little and it actually bent the toolbar I used to hitch the two together," he says. "It wasn't a major bend, but was enough to cause the rear tractor to run slightly off of the tracks from t

To read the rest of this story, download this issue below or click here to register with your account number.