12 Row Front Fold IH Planter

12 row front fold IH planter PLANTERS Planters 15-6-10 "It folds easily for transport and cost only $15,000 to build," says Art Doyle, Hampton, Ontario, who turned two International 8-row straight-frame planters into a 12-row front-fold model. Doyle copied the folding design of Deere's 7000 planter to build his own front-fold frame which is equipped with one 4-row center section and two 4-row wings. Two hydraulic cylinders fold the wings forward. He used the hoppers and row units from the two 8-row planters. Each hopper serves 6 rows. He pulls a Deere air seeder behind the planter to blow dry starter fertilizer up to the planter. Doyle uses the planter for custom work only. "I had been planting with two 1982 IH 8-row planters and decided I wanted a 12-row planter in order to save a man and a tractor. However, a new IH 900 12-row planter would have cost about $58,000. Also, I don't like the rear-fold design on IH planters because there are too many moving parts. I built my front-fold frame for just $2,300. "It really folds slick. The tongue is built in two sections, with one section sliding inside the other when the planter is folded out for field position. The tongue is 16 ft. long in field position and 32 ft. long in road transport position. The planter has eight lift assist wheels - four on the center section and two on each wing. Each lift assist wheel is equipped with a hydraulic cylinder. An automatic leveling device allows each wing to float up and down independently." Doyle got the second IH 8-row planter from a neighbor who had junked it. He rebuilt some of the row units. He used 7-in. sq., 3/8-in. wall steel tubing to build the planter frame and 7- and 6-in. sq., 1/ 2-in. wall steel tubing to build the tongue. Six hydraulic lines and four monitor lines are protected inside a flexible plastic tube mounted on top of the tongue. When the wings are folded out into field position the tube is automatically folded in half over a mechanical hinge device. A pto-operated hydraulic pump mounted behind the tractor operates the blower fans on the planter, and the tractor's hydraulics operate hydraulic cylinders mounted on the lift assist wheels and planter markers, and also the blower on the air seeder. The markers are operated by a separate remote outlet on the tractor, allowing Doyle to operate them independently of lift assist wheels. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Art Doyle, Rt. 1, Hampton, Ontario, Canada LOB 1JO (ph 416 263-2615).

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