“Shortly after he bought the tractor several years ago, he began adding a live hydraulic system to it. A hydraulic pump that was added to the front of the tractor is direct-driven by a shaft coupled to the front motor pulley. The shaft is routed through the housing which originally existed for the hand crank starter.
“His next project was building a self-leveling loader that has upward and downward hydraulic pressure, as well as a hydraulic tilting bucket. The loader is self-leveling due to a clever design that my grandfather came up with. The loader features two lift arms configured in a parallelogram, which controls the tilt of the bucket when the loader is raised or lowered. The self-leveling feature prevents the need for the operator to continuously adjust the tilt angle of the bucket as a load is raised or lowered.
“This tractor originally had a narrow front-end. It worked fine but my grandfather, my brother Grayson, and I decided to build a wide front end for the tractor. The wide front end is sturdy and provides more stability than the original narrow front end, and it has a couple of unique features. The front end was built as an ‘A’ frame configuration with two pillow block bearings connecting it to the tractor. This design allows the front wheels to move up and down independently of the rear wheels while going over bumps. Perhaps the most interesting part of the front end is the unique steering system. The pivot point for steering the wheels is directly above the centerline of each wheel, so much less steering force is needed to turn the wheels to the left or right compared to traditional steering mechanisms. Our final step was to add power steering to the tractor by tapping into the live hydraulic system.
“My grandfather taught me many lessons about design work and fabrication while working on this tractor. My brother, grandfather and I were very proud to finish the tractor in the Spring of 2021.”
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Helton Vandenbush, Butternut, Wisconsin (helton.vandenbush@gmail.com).