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Side-Swing Mower Hitch
Hobby Greene, Elizabethtown, N.C., built an offset hitch for his tractor mower. By pulling a pin he can shift the mower 16 in. to the side.
"It works great for mowing between rows of trees in my long leaf pine plantation," says Greene. "There used to always be a strip of unmowed weeds between the trees and the t
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Side-Swing Mower Hitch HITCHES Hitches 34-2-18 Hobby Greene, Elizabethtown, N.C., built an offset hitch for his tractor mower. By pulling a pin he can shift the mower 16 in. to the side.
"It works great for mowing between rows of trees in my long leaf pine plantation," says Greene. "There used to always be a strip of unmowed weeds between the trees and the tractor's rear wheels, but now I can mow right up to the trunks.
"The switch takes only a couple minutes. Nothing changes on the original mower so it can be easily moved back to its original position."
The mower was originally 3-pt. mounted. Greene cut the 3-pt. bracket off the mower and then used 2 by 4 tubing to make an upside-down U-shaped frame that pins onto the tractor's 3-pt. hitch.
He used more 2 by 4 tubing to build a pair of 28-in. long steel arms that connect the frame to the mower via four homemade bushings and four 1-in. dia. steel pins. Two of the bushings are welded on between the frame and arms, and the other two are welded on between the arms and L-shaped, heavy-duty angle iron brackets. The brackets are welded to a pair of 7-in. wide, 2-ft. lengths of channel iron that are welded to cross braces on top of the mower deck.
He also welded a metal tab about halfway back onto each arm, and he attached a pair of matching bushings onto the mower deck. A 1-in. dia. metal "stop pin" drops through a hole in each tab into the bushing.
"It's really easy to use. If I want to offset the mower I use the stop pin on one arm, and if I want to pull the mower straight behind the tractor I switch the stop pin to the other side," says Greene. "I thought about using hydraulic cylinders to offset the mower, but I decided that using stop pins would work just fine.
"I had to lengthen the driveshaft 2 ft. so the offset mower would clear the tractor's rear wheel. I used a lathe to make the bushings," notes Greene, who says he spent about 28 hours making the conversion.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Hobby D. Greene, P.O. Box 9, Elizabethtown, N.C. 28337 (ph 910 876-3380; hdg05@earthlink.net).
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