Welcome to TBN, Lexie.
The simple answer is - it's complicated.
Not sure what kind of tractor you're using, but my advice is to leave that bothersome yoke on the mower and keep trying try to get it dialed in.
You either need the yoke part of the mounting frame for the pivot motion to work, or you'll need to do major modifications and add hydraulics to get the same bar motion.
These mowers were design to be hitched up to older, standard size tractors and are challenging to get set up on newer, "smaller", more compact machines, so the manual doesn't offer a lot of help for those. My first issue was interference between those adjustable lift arms on the U-frame of the mower and the lift arms on my 3pt hitch and also the backhoe subframe. I was able to work around those problems by cutting about 4" off the tops of the U-frame lift arms and making an adapter that moves my tractors top link mounting hole aftwards about 6".
When adjusted right, the bar should stay parallel to the ground when you lift it about a foot, then as you continue to lift it, the bar will pivot at an angle to the ground until vertical, allowing you to get past nearby trees and through narrow gates. For me, this is essential, as I have a small, crowded property. Also, the sickle bars worst enemies are metal fence posts and wire fencing. Being able to quickly pivot the blade up to clear "the un-mowable" helps avoid replacing parts and downtime.
After much fiddling around with all the adjustments over the two seasons that I've had mine, I realized that my cable is too long to ever get it adjusted so that it will pivot before I run out of 3pt lift. Before I try to mow with it this season I'm going to shorten the cable so I don't run out of adjustment thread.
