Custom-Built Pickup

Custom-Built Pickup PICKUPS Miscellaneous 19-1-25 Montana farmer Rudy DeBruycker needed a big sprayer to work his 4,000 acres of small grains. But he wasn't satisfied with conventional pickup sprayers so he modified his 1983 Dodge 350 1-ton pickup, mounting new 24-in. wide, deep lug flotation tires in back (designed for a Hesston self-propelled swather) and a 3-speed trans-mission behind the pickup's original 4-speed transmission to provide more gears. A 500-gal. tank and 60-ft. Blumhardt boom mount on back of the pickup and are pinned to a steel frame which can be quickly removed from the pickup and re-placed with a dump box for hauling rocks or other materials. "It has a lot more lugging power and traction and flotation than a conventional sprayer," says DeBruycker. "I put the pickup transmission in second or third gear and run the 3-speed transmission in low gear. The pickup's 360 cu. in. V-8 gas engine has plenty of power. I paid $500 for the tires and $500 for the transmission. The new wheels didn't match the bolt hole pat-tern of the pickup wheels so my dealer made new ones. "I bought the pickup equipped with dual wheels and a dump box on back. The first year I tried mounting the spray boom be-hind the dump box, but I couldn't see be-hind well enough and the boom was too high, making spray drift a problem. Also, on wet ground the dual wheels left deep tracks in the field. "The big tires raised the back end of the pickup and made it look like a hot rod. They also kept the sprayer from being level. I solved the problem by jacking up the front of the pickup and mounting a 4-in. sq. steel frame under it. The back of the frame has brackets so it can be bolted to the sprayer support frame. I tie the two frames together with a chain on each side. By removing the chains and pulling two pins I can remove the sprayer and put the dump box back on. "I mounted a winch on front so I can use the pickup in the fall to hook an anhydrous tank up to my chisel plow. I use a snatch block on the chisel plow hitch." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Rudy DeBruycker, Rt. 2, Box 6265, Dutton, Mont. 59433 (ph 406 476-3406).

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