Front Steer Tractor Bean Bar

Front Steer Tractor bean bar CROPS Weed Control 15-4-9 "People really gawk when you drive it down the mad," says Carl Bjorklund, Lakefield, Minn., who built a front-steered bean bar to mount on his Minneapolis Moline tractor. All tractor controls, including steering wheel, brake and clutch, mount on one of the up-front seats. "I first put it on a 302 MM tractor. Now we have it on a Jet Star 3 MM," says Bjorklund, noting that the basic idea would work well on any tractor. In order to steer the tractor from up-front, he mounted a hydrostatic steering unit from a Case combine on the bar, complete with steering wheel. It's plumbed into the tractor's hydraulics. Then he disconnected the tractor's original tie rods and ran a new tie rod from one front wheel to the other. The new tie rod connects up to a steering cylinder, also taken from the Case combine, which mounts on the front side of the axle. It's connected to the hydrostatic steering unit on the bean bar. "All we have to do to switch back to regular steering is to disconnect the steering cylinder and put the original tie rods back in place," says Bjorklund. To control the tractor's brakes, cables run from a pedal on the bean bar driver's seat to the original tractor brake pedal. Up-front throttle controls are also linked to the original controls by cable. A direct mechanical linkage runs from a front pedal back to the clutch. For safety, a kill switch mounts up next to the driver. Consists of a wire running from the distributor to a grounding switch. "We've used it for five years with no problems. People don't know what to think when they see it in the field with no driver in the seat," says Bjorklund. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Carl Bjorklund, Rt. 1, Box 38, Lakefield, Minn. 56150 (ph 507 662-5948).

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