On 07/30/2015 9:12 PM, Martin Eastburn wrote:
Interesting. My John Deer 4wd series 1 is a Cat 1. The pins that are
used to pick up with are maybe 7/8 and then there is a sleeve. Maybe it
is 5/8 plus 1/8" making 7/8 tubing around the pin that is hard. I
suspect the tubing is the consumable while the pin is the strength that
pulls. I thought it were larger myself.
I use 48" wide Power Tiller, 56" wide hog mower, 48" fine cut and 48"
front end loader.
....

One last note...perhaps for the lighter stuff they have gone to bushings
so the can be used with a Cat 0 tractor w/o replacing the pins; again if
so I've never noticed. Not sure if the Deere dealer has anything that
small in stock to look at; when I'm out next time I'll look around.

Even as a kid I never could understand why Dad never would get a small
utility for around the place; as noted, everything here I got with the
utility after we came back to the farm after he passed 15 yr or so ago
by now. The closest we had back then was an old (1930's vintage
Caterpillar 22 (22 drawbar hp) left from the period when granddad had a
bunch of them they used with a 3-row pull-type lister for all the row
crops that had a stiff-frame bucket. It was too low to load a truck
with but could move a little dirt or the like. Of course, being tracked
it left a heckuva mess afterwards on the ground. Neighbors at the time
had little Ford 8N that was just so cute and handy...later on (early
60s, had an Allis Chalmers D-17 that eventually bought a bucket for --
it was a nice loader tractor altho still just barely enough height to
get over the side of a 2T grain truck side. For it he also eventually
bought a 7-ft Fordson bush hog, but without a live PTO it was a real
trick maneuvering it around close quarters without it driving you
instead of vice versa...but that's what (along with a 15-ft solid shaft
flail mower) is what he made do with and was what was here when we got
back...

I bought the JD 955 (had to go back to the Wichita area to find one;
there's just almost no small utility stuff out here and what there is
doesn't often come up for resale) and most of the attachments within a
year or two after we came back...they happened to have a 6-ft belly
finish mower that fit and a 66" tiller (Land Pride) at the time so took
them along w/ the tractor. It already had the bucket as it was a
tradein from a landscaping outfit; been pretty heavily abused
cosmetically but has been solid mechanically for another 12-13 yr so was
a good deal. Would like to have been a little larger but we needed to
drag a bunch of dirt away from the house to regrade as over the years
including the Dust Bowl of the '30s it had gotten to where the house was
lower than the yard all around so nothing drained (on those rare
occasions when it does actually rain here ) so I got the smaller for
the clearance under the trees and around "stuff" in the yard to do that.
It worked nicely with the tiller and 6-ft box blade to drag to a pile
and then use the larger loader on the old JD 4440 to load the truck and
haul. For the larger areas around the feedlots and machinery parking
areas I also bought a new Rhino 15-ft batwing mower to use around the
place and relegate the flail to pasture cleanup. It's much more
maneuverable and does a cleaner job and can get close enough to fences
and outbuildings that then the belly mower on the 955 can clean up
pretty well. I'd like to find a 3-pt sickle sidebar to be able to slide
under the cedar windbreaks and along the feedlot fences between posts
but they're also very rare out here. I found a new one a few years
after the move but it was back eastern part of the state and I was on
way back to TN before we'd gotten the house there sold so didn't close
the deal and when got back somebody else had taken it...didn't know that
Deere had quit making 'em at the time and there were no more other than
finding used...

Anyway, I suppose that the difference is both age and that all the stuff
here is a little larger on the pins used but I've never seen an actual
pin boogered to the point it would be any problem to use so I still
think it's a case of simply using a Cat 0 pin from the factory to make
things universal w/o having to swap rather than that the sleeves are
really considered a "consumable"--altho I'll grant one's a lot more
likely to mung one of them up than the pin itself which sorta' makes
them that...

Anyway, "far too much information" and I needs to go get busy and I'll
shut up and go away for the time being...altho I may try to post some
actual pictures somewhere; this year things look pretty good as we've
finally(!!!) had some decent rains after the previous five years of
severe drought--although we're now getting to where we need another for
the row crops (milo, primarily with some other feed sorghums) to make a
crop they're going to have to have at least one more good rain.

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