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LifeTrac - mid1900's proprietary 3pt hitch attachments?
  • This seems like something which hopefully would not be too difficult to design (there were I believe about 6-8 different three point hitch designs, from the first Ford tractors up until later, when things became more standardized I think in the mid 70's or so) and which could greatly improve the usability of a LifeTrac tractor. Although it does not directly fit the design goal of building it all for yourself from scratch, it would seem to be a high reward thing to take into account because in many cases you can find some well used but still working piece of farming hardware for cheap because it is not a 'universal' three point hitch but instead was designed for one manufacturer's line of equipment... They were designed to be incompatible with each other intentionally so if you bought a Ford tractor you would only buy a Ford sickle bar mower for instance. Sometimes things like different rotation directions or speeds were used for power takeoffs, I am not directly familiar with any of the quirks of this machinery, I just know there are different standards from having originally searched for websites suggesting how to buy a good cheap used tractor - http://homestead.org/NeilShelton/UsedTractor/HowtoBuyaVeryUsedTractor.htm - only to come to the conclusion that even the oldest cheapest and most used tractors will cost alot more than a LifeTrac and would still not be reliable or cheap to service/maintain/keep tires on/etc.

    However...

    Attachments are another matter. :) I've seen some of the stuff go for cheaper than I think you could build it, and certainly less work if you lack the energy to build a new machine every time you need to do some job.

    Do others think this would be worth supporting? I'm willing to do more research into this myself and post it, just seeing if anyone else is willing to share in the load because it wont happen instantly/i'm very busy RL due to poverty and disability.
     
  • 2 Comments sorted by
  • Hi Jerry,


    I just don't see the point in it. Here in Europe you can buy a lot of old equipment for scrap value, with standardized hitch. All the implements that have been built for tractors with 15-50hp are extremely cheap to buy because farmers today use 80-300hp tractors and don't use these implement sizes anymore.
    Buying such used equipment is cheaper than building it yourself and you save your time.


    But why hassle with something not standardized if you can buy better easily?


    If the situation in the states is similar, just forget about those exotic hitch designs, in Europe at least 99% of farm tractors had the standard hitch design already in the sixties.


    Mike

     
  • Because the best deals are on the nonstandard designs because (by definition) they aren't of use (normally) to someone not using that specific model of tractor. Or it lets you take advantage of market flukes, say some farmer selling off all his Farmall attachments at the same time, for a far better deal than buying one at a time because he's getting out, yet are only a deal if you have a compatible Farmall tractor. (or.. can mod the hitch on the LifeTrac)

    I posted a warning in one of my other posts that most of my designs would primarily be of interest to those in the most desperate poverty, where every dollar counts. Thats the situation i'm in, and thats the situation most who i'd like to help are in. Saving even $100 on an attachment is worth it, that could be your food for the rest of the month or let you get the attachment this year instead of next year. I assumed part of the reason of the open source tractor was to reduce the costs of entry to the absolute minimum possible? Are my ideas unwelcome? :( I have not yet researched the different hitch designs, I realize it could well be of more interest to me than the general community, but would building in the potential for such flexibility to the Life Trac actually be not wanted?

    The hitch designs werent necessarily radically different, they were just different enough to be noncompatible with each other to try to force buyer lock in. (and succeeded)
     

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