Angry about an I Match

[YesDeere]

Borrowed my fathers tiller last year (Land Pride on his 4310) and the shaft was too long, not by much. So I decided that I needed the i match and it would make up the difference. It did and worked great. But will absolutely not hook up to anything else. No mower, rake, box scraper,or pallet forks. They are all different brands but still. Before I start chopping and welding should I scrap it and find one with more adjustability? That fixed hook on top makes me want to burn things

 

[radman1]

The lack of adjustability of the top hook and JD's price are precisely why I would buy the I-match. Even my JD dealer sells the spee-co instead of the I- match. Also the JD I-match is slightly different in the height of the hook compared to many Cat I equipment. The I-match will fit the frontier equipment but may not quite work for other Cat I attachments. Get the HF quick hitch - cheap, adjustable, has optional top adapter and it performs just as well. HF makes 2 different Cat I quick hitches. Get the one with the slightly wider spread of the bottom hooks and your good to go.

 

[jgrreed]

I have the Speeco, and at first I thought it was great, but it's starting to lose its shine. I've going to have to do a lot of cutting, grinding, fabricating, etc. to make all my implements fit.

Someone else on here suggested JD's telescoping draft links as a way to keep the set up entirely universal, but not require a small coronary event just to hook up. You'll need to get out of your seat, but you'll save a lot of modifying time.

-Jer.

 

[mjncad]

I have the Land Pride quick-hitch. It's pricier than the Harbor Freight one; but I haven't had to modify it to make it work like most guys have done to their HF quick hitches.

I bought the Land Pride specifically for the adjustable top hook. It hooked up to my Frontier rear blade just fine. All my other implements are not quick hitch rated, so I've made my own adapters to work with both quick hitch and non-quick hitch equipped tractors.

 

[BATTY54]

I was just looking at them at our local JD dealer Saturday $200 . I will buy the HF one for around $60 with the coupon next time they are out. I did not know HF made two different ones. Could you post the model numbers?

 

[California]

There are two different widths, measured between the lower hooks.

One QH is 'industry standard', the other is a little wider. Their dimensions should be on HF's website.

I suggest measure all your implements then buy to match.

 

[kennyd]

Borrowed my fathers tiller last year (Land Pride on his 4310) and the shaft was too long, not by much. So I decided that I needed the i match and it would make up the difference. It did and worked great. But will absolutely not hook up to anything else. No mower, rake, box scraper,or pallet forks. They are all different brands but still. Before I start chopping and welding should I scrap it and find one with more adjustability? That fixed hook on top makes me want to burn things

Your anger is mis-directed YD. The problem is NOT the I-Match, but with implement manufacturers who do not follow a set standard of spacing from the ASAE. In my opinion, as I have stated often in these threads-adding "adjustability" to a QH (quick-hitch) reduces the quickness of it if you still have to adjust the hitch for each implement.

Search my friend-this has all been hashed out before
Try these terms:
I-Match
ASAE
Quick Hitch

 

[kennyd]

There are two different widths, measured between the lower hooks.

One QH is 'industry standard', the other is a little wider. Their dimensions should be on HF's website.

I suggest measure all your implements then buy to match.

The "standard" is the WIDER one from Horrible Fright. They first sold the narrow one and everybody was spreading them open with jacks and such...

 

[jdbower]

Also look into Pat's system. IMHO there are only two ways to go - mount brackets on all your implements that aren't ASAE standard and use a fixed iMatch-like system or get Pat's since hooking up the toplink is trivial and you won't have to worry about compatibility (except maybe for PTO shafts that aren't quite long enough).

 

[California]

The "standard" is the WIDER one from Horrible Fright. They first sold the narrow one and everybody was spreading them open with jacks and such...

Well sort of. Their first version was marketed as 26.75" but the early ones had bad variances around that nominal size. Not everybody had to spread them open. I bought one of those and didn't need to modify it, it was spot-on to their spec.

I researched and found that the ASAE standard describes the implement's dimensions:

"The distance between the inner portions of the two lower hitch pins must be between 26.81 and 26.94 inches."

So HF's standard was 0.060" tighter than the real industry standard. Sixty thousandths isn't much to modify, for a couple hundred dollar savings. This was back when they only sold one model of QH.

I see that HF's two current models are described as 26.5" and 27.5" so neither is close to that ASAE standard.

 

[nmu98]

I love the I match. It took me a little time to get all my implements to work with it. But, I did not want to have to adjust the hitch, or anything to hook up. I can attach to any peice I own now in a few seconds.

 

[JB4310]

I love the I match. It took me a little time to get all my implements to work with it. But, I did not want to have to adjust the hitch, or anything to hook up. I can attach to any peice I own now in a few seconds.

Same here, I was gonna say what ever hitch you go with there will be some modding needed either to the implements or the hitch, but it's well worth it.
I can pick up any of my 6 implements with out leaving the seat now, comes in handy for jockeying things around, I store my stuff in 2 rows and it makes it simple to pick one up and move it out of the way to get to the next.

I had the i-match first then got the HF model for another tractor, that required a lot of modding to make it compatible with the equipment mated to the i-match, in my case it would have been much easier to just get another i-match, only saved $100. or so.


JB.

 

[ddivinia]

Borrowed my fathers tiller last year (Land Pride on his 4310) and the shaft was too long, not by much. So I decided that I needed the i match and it would make up the difference. It did and worked great. But will absolutely not hook up to anything else. No mower, rake, box scraper,or pallet forks. They are all different brands but still. Before I start chopping and welding should I scrap it and find one with more adjustability? That fixed hook on top makes me want to burn things

Return the imatch and buy a shorter drive shaft...

D.

 

[YesDeere]

Thanks for all of the input guys. I love this site!!! Got a torch and welder and am gonna keep the old I match. Make it work by god. My old man told me "If it were easy women and children would do it"

 

[Spudland_Dave]

My old man told me "If it were easy women and children would do it"

Your old man is right....My wife has hooked up/unhooked my GB65 Box Blade a few times with the iMatch...we dont have kids yet, but god willing when we do, i'm sure they'll be able to use the iMatch