No-Till Farmer
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Jared Druffel, a Pullman, Wash., farmer, modified his John Deere 1910 tow-between air commodity cart and 1890 air seeder toolbar. The adjustments made it so that the cart and the toolbar are now solidly attached as opposed to pulling in tandem with each other. Druffel says this helps to make sure the cart doesn’t drift as badly when going downhill.
He’s using a 50-foot drill with a 350-bushel cart. Druffel attached two diagonal drawbars directly under the axle, so the drill frame height isn’t affected when going through a dip or over a hill. Instead, the drill can pivot up and down under the axle. The drawbars then come out to the hinges under the drill frame.
“The drawbars look kind of funky because at first we had them as a ‘U-joint’ type knuckle, but the tool was too squirrelly,” Druffel says. “It would get into the tires and act unpredictably, so we welded the horizontal plane solid. There is enough play in the vertical hinge to allow for the side-to-side travel required when the cart twists independently of the tool.”
The hydraulic lift cylinders are also teed together so that the cart can pivot separately from the tool. This makes backing it into corners or maneuvering in the barnyard much easier. “The tool is fixed to the cart, so as the cart turns, the tool turns with it,” Druffel says. “The auger is still fully functional, except now we can’t auger out extra when we want to…