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2-Way Wagon Great For Winter Use
“I built this bi-directional wagon to make it easier for my son Robert to load round bales for his milk goats, especially during the winter,” says Ray Camden, St. Patrice-de-Beaurivage, Quebec. “It’s equipped with a steering axle and extendable hitch at both ends, allowing him to move the trailer back and forth without having to move a lot of snow to turn around.”
  The wagon is designed to handle 3 plastic-wrapped round bales that rest on a series of 2 by 3-in. steel cross pieces.
  He used the twin-beam steering axles off a pair of 1980’s Ford 1/2-ton pickups to make the wagon’s steering axles, keeping the hubs and a short section of each axle. He cut off both ends of the axle inside the steering knuckle and welded them onto short lengths of heavy-walled 2 by 3 tubing.
  The wagon’s main support beam was made using two 10-ft. long well pipes with different diameters, so one can slip inside the other. A 6-in. dia. pipe on front slides into a 6 1/2-in. dia. pipe on back. Camden welded several 3/16-in. thick metal straps around the outside of the interior pipe to take up the slack between the two pipes, and he also installed grease zerks on the outside pipe.
  “The design allows the front and back end of the wagon to swivel freely when traveling over uneven ground,” says Camden.
  Each extendable hitch consists of a 1 1/4 by 2 1/2-in. length of box tubing that slides into some 2 by 3 tubing that’s fastened to the center of the axle.
  “The extendable hitch makes it easy to hook up the tractor to the wagon,” says Camden. “I just lift a spring-loaded pin and grab onto an L-shaped handle to pull the hitch out, then after I move the tractor the pin automatically resets itself into the next closest hole.”
  “We get a lot of snow here during the winter and store the bales in a field. If we loaded the bales onto a conventional wagon we’d have to plow a lot of snow to turn the wagon around. Now we just bring the wagon in and unhook it, then use the tractor to load bales. Then we hook up to the opposite end of the wagon and drive out.”
  Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Ray Camden, 161 St. David’s Range, St. Patrice-de-Beaurivage, Quebec, Canada G0S 1B0 (ph 418 596-2029).


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2014 - Volume #38, Issue #1