fast hitch vs three point

I am a newbie atthis Farmall stuff, could someone explaint o me the difference between three point and teh Fast Hitch. Can you use a fast hitch with standard three point equipment or do you need some type ove converter? How do you get a standard draw bar on a fast hitch tractor for pulling wagons and such. pardon the ignorance here...

3 point has a center link, 3-links,, fast hitch 2-point.you can make or buy conversions. as 3 point stuff will not work w/o a converision. they should make a draw bar to go in you fast hitch. I don't have a fast hitch so some one else will help you w/ that.

Fast Hitch is a quick-attach style of hitch. There's a yoke with two sockets on the tractor and two prongs mounted on the implement. You're supposed to be able to back into the implement, lift, and drive away.

Three point hitch consists of two lower arms with holes in the ends of them, and a third "top link." You back up to the implement, get off, and wrestle the holes in the lower arms over pins mounted on the implement. Most of the time you also install the top link to keep the implement from tipping over backwards, and adjust its length to level the implement out.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each. For example, you can't always back into a fast hitch implement and drive away. Factory three point hitch systems have better draft (load sensing) control than fast hitch.

All the other tractor and implement manufacturers went with three point hitch, so IH eventually ended up going to three point too.

If you want the tractor to be useful, get one with a factory three point hitch. Fast hitch is more of a novelty for collectors and people who "play" with their tractors, and the implements are more difficult to find.

You can get various adapters to use three point implements with fast hitch, but none work as good as a factory three point hitch.

No experience here with fast-hitch, but quite a bit with 3-point, on a couple of Ford tractors I've owned. This hitch first came out, as far as I know, on the 1939 Ford-Ferguson 9N. Harry Ferguson is said to have invented the hitch and the hydraulic system which goes with it. The hydraulic system not only raises and lowers the hitch, but is sensitive to load. When the implement (esp. a plow, I'd think) got overloaded (for example, sank too deep into the soil), the hitch would sense this and raise the implement enough to make use of whatever traction was available at the wheels.
The sensitivity to load is important, but one of the other things that the 3-point hitch did was to make very fast hitching and unhitching possible. You pull three pins and your implement is off. It takes just seconds. Hooking up is a matter of having the hitch arms close to the
part of the implement that takes the three pins.
This is not quite as fast as unhitching, but still can be done in a very short time.
It may be hard to appreciate this today. I grew up with tractors made in the 20s and 30s, and later drove several letter-series Farmalls.
The row-crop tractor (the Farmall being the first successful one) had all kinds of things that could be attached to it. The most important were probably cultivators and mowers. Attaching a cultivator outfit to an early Farmall was a major undertaking, with bolts that hooked the front of the cultivator to the tractor frame, and
the same rigamarole was required for the back. The raise-lower levers had to be bolted to the tractor, and then the various arms and rods that did the work had to be hooked into the levers. Probably a good hour's work. This was one reason farmers did not always take off the front of the cultivators during the summer. They could drop the back part and use the drawbar for other work.
The original Farmall mower was bolted to the drawbar. This doesn't appear to have been as complicated as the cultivators, but still would have taken some time.
At some point in the thirties, IHC came out with the Quick-Attachable drawbar and implements.
Four toggle bolts released the drawbar very quickly. The mower was already attached to a similar drawbar, so all you had to do was back up to the mower and line up the toggle bolts with the slots in the drawbar. These things never seemed to line up right, mostly because it was common just to drop the mower onto some blocks, which eventually sank a little bit into the ground and left the mower slots out of alignment. Pull, haul, lift, mount. I've done this hundreds of times with my father's F-12.
This same Quick-Attachable system was used for the cultivators, which had toggle bolts front and rear. More work than the mower, but relatively quick to put on and take off (4 toggle bolts front, four rear, plus the lift arms, which went through holes in the levers and were held in place with pins--or nails after the cotter pins were inevitably lost). Even so, we often left the front cultivators on during the weeding season. We could still use the tractor for drawbar work. The cultivators made the tractor a little stiffer to steer, but that was one of the sacrifices we'd make to avoid taking time out for mounting and dismounting the entire cultivator.
The Q-A drawbar and implement-mounting system was continued through the H and M series, at least.
Since the 3-point system was patented, I believe other manufacturers tried to get around this by coming up with other systems, like "fast hitch." Never used these, but I know from reading the letters in this forum that lots of other people have, and I'll leave it to them to
tell you more.
I guess I'm still living in the thirties. I really LIKE describing this stuff!

in regard to the drawbar. Take a 460 / 560 with a fast hitch for example. There is the drawbar which is essentially two prongs attached by a bar in between with holes in it. All of the pull load is directed through the prongs and the bail, etc up to the mounting point. There is also the swinging draw bar that most FH tractors today don't have anymore. A standard draw bar that attaches in a pin hole in the bail just rear of the forward pivot. It straddles the drawbar mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph.

You can purchase adapters that lock into the receivers of the FH and add a bracket to the rock shaft to mount the top link. It works "OK". FH equipment isn't the easiest thing in the world to find and you aren't going to buy any new equipment that mounts via fast hitch.

Fast hitch implements attach to a single single latch (hitch). This latch is attached (and supported)to the tractor in 3 places. Two places are at either end of the cross bar that the latch hangs on, and the 3rd place by a bar that the latch sits on. This 3rd bar runs under the tractor and is bolted to the inverted drawbar. The cross bar attaches to 2 hitch arms that are part of the tractor.

Three point implements attach to the tractor at 3 points. 2 side points and a top link point.

I have 3 point hitches but I'm making a conversion attachment that will mount to a 3 point hitch and allow me to hook up fast hitch implements, of which I have a couple.

If you're going to be adding implements, go 3 pt.
Much bigger selection.
You can go to the case/IH website and search for 'Hitch' and you will see how the fast hitch connects.

Ok I have 3 tractors all with fasthitch I love it as it isnt to hard to hook up to. I run a 3pt adapter on the 460 so I can use the brushhog and the boom pole. Post hole digger is set up for fasthitch on the 300U. Box blade is also set up for the 3pt but have the fasthitch arms for the 300 so no big deal there. Soon all of my equip will be set up for the fasthitch as I is gettin to old to fight the 3pt stuff the adapter makes hookin up 3pt equip a lot of trouble. I will try to get some pics of the adapter as it is a good one and you could make your own.

Thanks bowlegs I would appreciate a photo. I have a three point blade and bush hog. Interested in how you convert the fast hitch to 3 point but also how you converted your attachments to fats hitch.

Redtail, Look at tonystractors.com, nice adaptors

Here's a 3P FH adapter. I think. David.

I just switched from an 856 fast hitch to an 856 3 point for my main loader chore tractor. I really miss my fast hitch. I could use a cross drawbar on the fast hitch to pull the feeder wagon and save cranking the jack on the wagon. I could put the bale fork or the blade on the fast hitch much quicker. With a long bale hook to unlatch the catches you can unhook fast hitch implements without leaving the seat. I haven't found anything 3 point I couldn't use with the right adaptors- I have four sets I have picked up at sales over the years have maybe $100 in all four sets. The one set of adapters hook on the 3 point implement like a 3 point quick hitch and actually works better than a 3 point quick hitch. The 06, 56 and 66 series with fast hitch had the same draft system on the fast hitch as the 3 point and they all had a swinging drawbar independent of the fast hitch or you could use a cross drawbar on the fast hitch. Lee

GA Dave, that's actually a picture of a RARE early 3pt hitch from IH. The idea was to still be able to back up to the implement, flip a couple of catches, lift, and drive away. That, and I think they were still trying to get around paying licensing on the 3pt hitch patent which was still in effect at the time.

Notice on the arms that there are no sockets. It's a solid piece.

One of the 3pt adapters does indeed look very much like that, though.

Converting 3pt equipment to fast hitch is easy. All you need to do is weld a set of fast hitch points on the implement in the right position.

can you post a picture 0f your 3pt to fast hitch converter? I have the same problem , 3pt tractor and lots of fast hitch implements.

This is an old thread but I noticed your post about the one-piece-arch-style IH 3pt conversion. I have one on my 240 and I am trying to learn more about it. Do you have any more data such as a part number? Thanks!

I'm getting quite a history lesson here. I do know that there are one point and two point fast hitches. A three point is a three point. I think the choice of hitches depended somewhat on the crops being worked and how often the implements were changed. I bought a SA one time with factory single point fast hitch but implements for it were unheard of around here. The fast hitch replaced the draw-bar hitch and I have heard it was made by IH. It was so popular that JD come out with the three point to beat the competition. The three point survived and all that is usually needed to hook it up is a big hammer.