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Garden Tractor Fitted With Front-Mount Dethatcher, Pull-Type Box Scraper
Charles Schlossler increased the usefulness of his Deere 318 garden tractor by mounting attachments on front and back.
  On front is a spring-toothed dethatcher. It's hydraulically raised and lowered. On back is a 5-ft. 2-in. wide box scraper with an axle that can be hydraulically adjusted 3 in. up or down to do grading work. It's equipped with a row of homemade scarifier teeth on front. The teeth are built in two sections and are free to swivel up or down on a steel pipe, making it possible to raise or lower them as needed.
  Schlossler bought a 4-ft. wide commercial dethatcher on sale for $80 and painted it Deere green and yellow. It's equipped with a pair of rubber caster wheels. The dethatcher mounts on a home-built parallel linkage system that attaches to the front of the tractor and is raised or lowered by the same hydraulic cylinder that's used to raise or lower Schlossler's snow plow.
  "I use a grass catcher with my lawn mower so I can dethatch and bag the grass clippings at the same time," says Schlossler. "It takes only about 5 minutes to mount or dismount the dethatcher. All I do is remove four pins from a bracket on the tractor."
  On back is a box scraper that rides on 13-in. wheels off an Audi car. The wheels are connected by an axle made from steel tubing. A 6-in. cylinder is used to raise or lower the scraper. A 1-in. manually operated thread screw is used to tilt the scraper to one side or the other, allowing it to be used to cut ditch sides. The thread screw fits into a big square nut that's used to adjust the axle up or down. "If I want I can lower one side 2 in. and cut on an angle. It works great on ditches," says Schlossler.
  The scarifier pivots on a round steel shaft and can be flipped up out of the way when not needed. "The scarifier teeth mount 8 inches ahead of the blade and penetrate 2 in. into the ground before the scraper blade even touches the ground," says Schlossler. "They loosen the soil, then the blade scrapes it off. The scraper hitch mounts on a 2-in. ball so it can pivot easily in any direction."
  The back of the rig is equipped with two indicators - one that shows how much the scraper is raised and lowered, and one that shows how much it's tilted.
  Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Charles Schlossler, 305 N. Green St., Roanoke, Ill. 61561 (ph 309 923-7187).


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1999 - Volume #23, Issue #3