3-point hitch lifiting boom

   / 3-point hitch lifiting boom #1  

Capricious

Platinum Member
Joined
Jul 2, 2014
Messages
692
Location
Eastern Missouri
Tractor
Mitsubishi MT160D
Yet another homemade ("shop fabricated") boom.

Needed a boom for my old Mitsubishi:
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/mitsubishi-satoh/316342-mt160d.html

Did not want to spend $129.99 plus sales tax on a new one; saw several used booms advertised @ about $50 to $75 but either sold too quickly, or were located such a long distance away that the fuel cost to go get the thing would have eaten-up most of the savings.

I had an 11 foot piece of 2" by 3" by 3/16" rectangular tubing that had been laying around the yard for more than a decade, so decided to turn that into a boom. Spent $22.00 on some "drop offs" at the steel yard (did not use all of it on this project) plus spent about 8 bucks on gen-u-wine hitch pins for the lower arms.

The braces are lightweight steel angle from an old bed frame; the mounting plates for the pins for the lower arms are 3/8" by 3" flat bar. I torch-cut the 1" holes for the pins with my recently acquired acetylene torch:
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/welding/318494-old-tanks.html

The plates for the top link are 1/4" by 5" I also torch-cut the holes in these, but since these would have a removable pin in them, I cut some sections of pipe and welded these into the torch-cut holes for bushings (something I read about on this site.)

The end of the boom has a piece of 1/4" by 2' flat bar with a hole drilled in the lower end for a hook, and a slot cut on the upper end to hold chain.

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I might throw a coat of paint on it this coming weekend, and next weekend hope to use it on it's first real project; removing the bed from my Ranger pickup truck.
The truck was hit from the rear and the ends of the frame rails are badly buckled. While I am driving it almost every day, I can't tow a trailer with the trailer hitch
pointing at the ground:

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Will remove the bed and replace the rears of the frame rails with pieces sold for the purpose of repairing Rangers with rusted frames.
 
   / 3-point hitch lifiting boom #2  
Well done.
 
   / 3-point hitch lifiting boom #3  
Nice boom and nice old outboard Johnson Seahorse
 
   / 3-point hitch lifiting boom #4  
Hmmm, just LOOKING at that has inspired me to "3 point'ize" an engine crane that I have.

I just need to put two lift pins on it, or maybe a hitch bar across the upright, and then a bit of U-channel to take the top link.
 
   / 3-point hitch lifiting boom
  • Thread Starter
#5  
Hmmm, just LOOKING at that has inspired me to "3 point'ize" an engine crane that I have.

I just need to put two lift pins on it, or maybe a hitch bar across the upright, and then a bit of U-channel to take the top link.





I considered buying a Harbor Freight engine hoist and converting it, but decided I did not want to have that much money in it. If I already had the hoist, however, I might have gone that way.

I might add a manual winch to the thing. A little bit of vertical travel at the 3-point hitch translates to a lot of travel at the end of the boom- it would be nice to have a way to make fine adjustments while raising/lowering something critical, say something that needed to be lowered onto bolt holes or mounting studs (like the pickup truck bed). The hydraulic engine hoist would give me that option.

Since I have a small tractor, and the turf tires lower it even more, I built the thing a bit taller than the store-bought booms to try to get adequate clearance under the boom.
 
   / 3-point hitch lifiting boom #6  
Hmmm, just LOOKING at that has inspired me to "3 point'ize" an engine crane that I have.

I just need to put two lift pins on it, or maybe a hitch bar across the upright, and then a bit of U-channel to take the top link.

If you do that please keep us posted. I've a truck crane from HF I'd like to transform into a 3-pt boom pole.
 
   / 3-point hitch lifiting boom #8  

That looks interesting but I'm afraid I'd bend the cross drawbar.

Plus the HF crane can pivot.

/edit - anybody know the strength of the cross drawbars? My M4700 3 pt is rated at 2 tons, my B7610 at about 1300 lbs. The crane at 1,000 lbs. Will a cross drawbar hold 1,000 lbs?
 
   / 3-point hitch lifiting boom #9  
The problem with a pivoting boom is that you don't want it to pivot unless the post is perfectly vertical. Otherwise it will try hard to swing the load the direction the post leans. In my opinion a swinging boom would lead to more problems than it would solve.

Bruce
 
   / 3-point hitch lifiting boom #10  
A drawbar is made for pulling, I doubt it has a weight rating. A cat 1 is usually about an inch thick though, IIRC, I think it should do 1000 lbs no problem. If it's an issue, bend it back with the same load and bolt a piece of angle iron or tube steel on the bottom of it. A new cross drawbar is cheap.

What do you guys do with these lifting booms? Do you still use it if you have a loader?
 
 
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