Engineer Stupid Knows no Bounds

Today’s exciting achievement: I got my Pat’s Easy Change 3-point hitch system installed on my tractor. In order to do that, I had to generate another major achievement: I got my bush hog disconnected from my original 3-point hitch.

I’ll put up some photos of the tractor with the Pat’s kit installed. It’s not clear to me why tractor manufacturers haven’t decided to sell tractors with user-friendly hitches, but I have compensated for Kubota’s strange failure, so I don’t care any more.

The yellow thing is a pry bar I used to line the ends of the hitch up.

The kit consists of two cast spring-loaded claws that trap implement pins and hold onto them. That’s all you really need to pick up a mower or baler or whatever. You still have to attach the PTO shaft and the top link, but you don’t have to beat and kick on the lower arms any more, and you can back your tractor right up to an implement and connect the lower arms without an assistant or a nightmare of adjusting and cursing.

It is astounding that tractor makers went a hundred years without making implements easy to change. The stupidity boggles the mind. A tractor is a torment to use if you can’t change implements easily. One of the great virtues of a tractor is that you can use it for a lot of different things. When it takes an hour to change implements, you’re not going to change them very often, and you’re going to lose a lot of the tractor’s usefulness.

Dealing with this thing put me in a foul mood. I need to pray and decompress. I hate stupid engineering. I really hate it.

The Pat’s invention is wonderful, but I have some complaints. The instructions are on a par with Chinese instructions. The diagrams don’t match the parts, either. You have to sit back and say, “If the person who wrote this had known what he was doing, maybe he would have said THIS…”, and then you try your theories out.

Another gripe: the parts are covered in sticky paint that makes them hard to assemble. Some of the tolerances are tight, which is a sign of quality, but the manufacturer ought to let you know you need to use oil or anti-seize in order to get the kit installed. One user says the heavy pins that go through the clamps will actually seize inside the tractor arms if you don’t do something about the paint.

It should take half an hour to get the kit installed, but I took more like an hour, because I had to do things more than once. The instructions tell you to do things in the wrong order, so you have to take things apart after you’ve put them together.

I don’t care. If the invention works, I can stand the one-time pain of poor instructions. It’s better than dealing with the repeated pain of not being about to remove and attach implements.

I had a great time removing the bush hog from the tractor. In a sane world, this would take no more than one minute. I would guess it took me two hours. The worst part was the PTO shaft. This is the implement’s drive shaft. It’s covered with a shield that prevents you from touching the moving shaft. That would be fine, but the shield is very hard to take off.

In case anyone else out there is having problems taking a Eurocardan shaft cover off an implement, I will clue you in. You lift the tabs on the little black collar. Then you slide it back to expose the end of the big yellow shroud. Then you will see the idiotic giant snap ring that holds the big yellow shroud on.

The snap rings are made so it’s hard to get a tool under them to pry them off. Because who would ever want to do that? Only someone who doesn’t want to use the same implement for the life of his tractor.

You have to put a screwdriver under the ring, lift it up, fight with it, and get it to move toward the implement. This releases the compression on the yellow shroud, and then you can slide it back, exposing the end of the PTO shaft. Then you MIGHT be able to push the spring-loaded button that releases the shaft so you can remove your implement. You MIGHT.

It’s so stupid. There are better designs out there. I’m considering buying a new shaft just to avoid dealing with this one again. Or maybe I should put hose clamps where those Satanic snap rings used to be.

The solution they used in the old days wasn’t too bad. Here it is: stay away from the spinning, uncovered shaft. That worked really well. But then lawyers showed up and ruined it. I’m sure.

Now I have a hitch I can use, probably. I hope. That means I can attach my ballast box and quit hauling that annoying bush hog everywhere. Today when I got the bush hog off, I could not resist going for a joy ride without it. I’m going to love having the ballast box back there. It will be good for the tractor, it will keep the rear wheels down, and it will give me a place to put a chainsaw. Perfect.

Next project? Either a new flail mower or a new set of brush forks. The ones I have are a horror to remove and install, so I can’t use the loader bucket. If I can find a better alternative, I’ll be all over it.