BCS "curved coupler" for DIY sulky or trailer?

[PGC]

Hey F850!

I have the one with the extra wide wheels on the right there....you found the actual one I bought.

The cart does OK, but to be honest it is not an ideal way to haul any volume of material and it does lose traction.

With that cart loaded up to the top (with no extra rails, as pictured above) with leaf/soil mulch and me (210 lbs) it will go over just about any flat land and take an incline of I'd say maybe 30% as long as the soil you're driving on is compact and not covered with any grass/leaves etc. As soon as you hit any lose soil or areas of leaf & grass on an incline the tractor loses traction. You can sometimes coax it through these spots by turning the handle bars back and fourth with the differential locked, but most likely you'll have to dismount while still controlling the tractor and help "push". For extreme inclines I had a buddy behind me pushing on the cart and we were able to get some super heavy loads up a steep hill.

Going down hill, assuming you have some "grapes-on-the-vine", you can take a huge load and slide it using the brakes and handle bars to guide your somewhat uncontrolled decent. I had fun doing this on one job, but knew I was playing with fire for sure.

I now have some wheel weights and can fit some decent plates on each side so I hope that this added forward weight will help the machine maintain traction on at least slight inclines.

They aren't lying when Earth Tools says that the best implement to get material up a hill is the powerbarrow. That said, the cart is easy to put together yourself, is capable of hauling a lot of material in a day, and is pretty darn fun to ride around on (your turning radius is greatly increased with the use of a trailer though....you end up steering around corners with one hand and using left hand turns as much as possible because this is the hand that holds down the clutch lever...awkward, but fun).

It also makes one great mobile swimming pool for a 5 year old, and it's really easy to change the water....lol..

[PGC]

One more thing about hillside trailer towing with the BCS....you can find yourself in a pickle really quickly when your tractor starts to flip over to the side but your trailer, having a much wider axle, isn't. I found out just how heavy my 853 was.

Later I was told that my stock wheels can adjust outward for a wider track, which would no doubt help with this problem.

[Ford850]

PGC, Thanks for the details. I think I'll order a trailer coupler from Earth Tools and fab a pipe on an existing flat trailer of mine to try it out. If it works well enough on my terrain, I'll spring for the poly dump trailer.