Wheel Rim Seed Box Filler

Wheel rim seed box filler PLANTERS Planters 16-4-11 Old dual tractor wheel rims work great for making seed box fillers, says Leon Hopp, Lafayette, Minn., who modified a 20.8 by 38-in. dia. wheel rim and mounted it on his front-end loader in order to fill the seed boxes on his IH Cyclo planter. The wheel rim holds about 8 bu. of beans. Hopp fills it by lowering it under the chute on his gravity wagon and empties it out through a slide gate mounted on the underside of the wheel. "It makes it much easier to load soy-bean seed into our planter's two 11-bu. hoppers," says Hopp, who along with brother Gary plants about 350 acres of soybeans each year. At first Hopp tried pouring beans out through the wheel rim's existing axle hole, but found it was so big that seed dropped through too fast. To solve the problem he welded a 12-in. dia. flat disc over the hole on the bottom side of the wheel rim so that seed flows through the disc's mall spindle hole. He then mounted a 6 by 12-in. slide gate on the disc to control seed flow. On the top side of the wheel, he inserted a sheet metal cone inside the rim that funnels seed into the hole. The wheel rim swings freely on a 1-in. dia. shaft mounted on an angle iron frame that attaches to the front-end loader. "We simply rock the wheel rim back and forth to empty it out," says Hopp. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Leon Hopp, Rt. 1, Box 164, Lafayette, Minn. 56054 (ph 507 246-5167).

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