Tracked Self-Propelled Rototiller

Tracked Self-Propelled Rototiller CULTIVATORS Cultivators (58C) 20-4-36 I'm a retired mechanical engineer who recently discovered FARM SHOW. I feel you're doing a great service for the agricultural community by distributing all the shared ideas, so many of which are absolutely ingenious. White collar "thinkers" in our country must be envious. Here's one of my inventions FARM SHOW readers might be interested in. It's a tracked, self-propelled rototiller with a head that flips over 360? so the machine never has to turn around - you just keep going for-ward and back. I made the tracks out of 7 1/2-in. wide stainless steel conveyor link belt that I found at a scrap yard. They're driven by a 6 cu. in. hydraulic motor powered by a 3 gpm hydraulic pump belt driven off the 7 hp engine. The tiller features a head that's infinitely adjust-able up and down so I can work my garden, which has considerable slope to it, without pushing soil downhill as conventional rototillers do. I built a single-bottom mold-board for it that I can use to hill potatoes. Handlebars with hydraulic controls swing around so you walk alongside or at the rear of the machine depending on whether it's operating in forward or reverse. I've got about $650 in it. (Lawrence B. Johnson, 3475 Willowwood Ave., Bellingham, Wash. 98225-1143; ph 360 671-1028).

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