Home-Built Sprayer Compares To $30,000 Factory Model

Home-Built Sprayer Compares To $30,000 Factory Model SPRAYING Miscellaneous 28-1-33 It may look like an expensive factory-built sprayer, but Bill and Rusty Olson's pull-type sprayer was actually put together in their farm shop. The father-son farming team decided to build a new sprayer more than a year ago, but it took awhile for them to pull together all the necessary components. Rusty says he and his father looked at several sprayers owned by their neighbors and at farm shows and picked out the good points on each. They then incorporated those into their design. For a frame, they took channel iron from a couple of old anhydrous toolbars. "We added additional channel iron and steel tubing to come up with a frame that is about 5 1/2 ft. wide and 22 ft. long, including the tongue," the elder Olson says. They fitted the frame with an axle made of heavy I-beam reinforced with steel plate to make it stronger. Then they added 10-bolt hubs salvaged from a semi-truck tractor that had burned. "We took out the axles and welded the holes shut, so we have oil bath hubs," he says. The 10-bolt hubs were necessary to match up with wheels and 14.9 by 46 tires taken from an old Ro-Gator. The wheels are spaced 10 ft. on center. The Olsons located a 1,600-gal. stainless steel tank that had been taken off a junked TerraGator. It came with a second fresh water tank mounted above the sprayer tank for flushing the system. For a boom, they found a Bloomhart hydraulically leveled 80-ft. boom that someone had wrapped around a pole and scrapped. "We straightened it and now it's just fine," Olson tells. To hold the boom, they added a hydraulic parallelogram lift, constructed from the wings of an old Wil-Rich cultivator. "Mounted on the parallelogram lift, the boom can operate anywhere from 3 1/2 ft. off the ground up to 6 ft." The lift is designed so the boom can be removed with four bolts if a different tool bar or boom is needed. They plumbed the hydraulics on the lift using 1/2-in. steel pipe to reduce the number of hoses on the machine. While the leveling and lift is hydraulic, the boom must still be folded manually. "We're working on folding it hydraulically, though," says Bill. They traded their Raven 440 controller for a Raven 450 that allows them to control the boom in six different sections. The 450 controller does not have a serial port for GPS. However this fall Rusty purchased a Cultiva Light Bar Guidance System with mapping capabilities, which they also use for fertilizer and nitrogen application throughout the year. They used the pto-powered pump from their old 60-ft. tank sprayer, which they also built in their shop. They'd like to replace it with a hydraulic pump eventually. At a salvage yard in Mason City, they ran across an old 2-door steel office cabinet. It's 4 by 4 ft., and was just the right size to hold all the sprayer controls, to keep them out of the weather. It's mounted on the side of the trailer in front of the tank. When it was finished, they added a coat of industrial tractor yellow paint. The Olsons used their new sprayer to apply post-emergence herbicides in corn and soybeans, and again later in the season to apply aphid control in tall soybeans. "We spent under $4,000 to build a sprayer that's as good as one you'd pay $30,000 to buy," says Bill. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Bill and Rusty Olson, 2160 2870th St., Garner, Iowa 50438 (ph 641 927-4661; email: olsongrain@yahoo.com or gone_farmin @yahoo.com).

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