Advice needed: wheel arrangement on Woods RM59 finish mower.

[coss]

I recently bought a Woods RM59 finish mower. It has four wheels, and the two front wheels are mounted on arms that point outwards toward the sides of the mower. In that orientation, the front wheels of the mower bump up against the rear tires of the tractor. In fact, there is not enough clearance to hook up to the 3 pt hitch.

I can think of 3 solutions, and I would like opinions about all of them:

1. Take off the front wheels and use chains to suspend the front of the deck from the tractor. This is how many people use the RM59, Drawbacks include making it even more difficult to muscle around my gravel-floored tractor shed, and perhaps a rougher cut.

2. Swap the left and right front wheels so the arms are pointing toward the center of the mower. If I'm lucky, this maneuver might create enough clearance so the front mower wheels might fit inside the rear wheels of the tractor. I don't know for sure if the hardware can be interchanged like this; has anyone else tried it?

3. Fabricate a pair of steel extender bars about 8-12" long to attach to the Cat I pin holes of the mower, with new pins at their front ends. This would suspend the mower further away from the tractor so the front wheels would be well behind the tractor tires. It would also change the geometry of the mount, which might be a drawback. I'd have to extend the drive shaft, and if I made the extenders too long, I might even need to buy a longer shaft.

Please let me know what you would do if you were me.

Thanks.

 

[Turbys_1700]

I would try to swap the wheels first. I had to move my attachment bracket on my PRD 7200 when I hooked my mower up to my Workmaster 50. The front wheels clear fine now but if I lift up the mower real high it can touch the rear tires. I don't think the chain solution is good at all. Option #3 is probably the best overall if designed correctly but will take the most time, effort, and $$$.

 

[DJ54]

Woods does sell extensions, but are pricey. I bought a set to use on my Super C with Fast Hitch 3 pt. conversion arms. I was working 6-7 days a week, and no time to fabricate anything. If you do a search, and find a picture of them, it would be an easy build.

 

[2458n]

My Kubota has the same p







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My Kubota has the same short arm problem when using old Dearborn equip
ment.

 

[coss]

Thanks for the advice.

I will measure out the extra clearance I'd gain my reversing the wheels, left-to-right. If that doesn't work, I could move the brackets inwards on the deck until the mower wheels are inside of the tractor tires. Plenty of mower decks have a single front roller, and moving the wheels into such a location might yield a similar result.

If that fails, a friend of mine is good with metal. With his help, I suspect we could come up with extension bars.

 

[coss]

I thought I'd give an update to an old thread about my Woods RM59-3. Measurements indicated that reversing the wheels would not have given enough clearance on the rear tires of the tractor, so I came up with two ways of adding extender bars to the 3 point hitch lower pins:

1. Buy a pair of Cat 0 drawbars from Agrisupply, which have holes spaced 2" apart, and attach them to the two holes where the existing Cat 1 3 point hitch pins are located. You can attach them with bolts or Cat 0 pins with bushings. They will stick out plenty far toward the front so the lower arms can suspend the mower far enough back for the front casters on the mower to clear the rear wheels of the tractor.

2. I chose option #2: a welder friend of mine cut two 1/2 x 4" plates of hardened steel off the cutting edge of a scrapped road grader blade. After boring holes with an acetylene torch, it was easy to attach them to the same mower holes described above, with Cat 1 pins in the front holes. This gave an additional 7" of clearance for the wheels. I had to make the PTO shaft longer, using a length of Class 4 shaft material from Agrisupply. I also needed a longer top link from Tractor Supply. It now works fine.