Hi folks,
I'm wondering if some of you experts can school me on the automatic clutch release mechanisms on the new majors. When I was a kid I asked my grandfather about the U-shaped bracket that hangs under the top link. If I remember right, he told me you could wrap it over the top link, and when plowing (or similar) the top link would lift it when it raised over a rock and automatically released the clutch. He said he never used it himself as the guy who he bought the major from told him it didn't work great in practice - by the time it tripped any damage was already done. Better to be quick with stopping raising it yourself when you felt an obstruction.
I never really questioned nor looked at it after that, but two things go me thinking about it:
i) If it works like stated above, how do you lift the implement when you come to the end of a run without tripping it? Both my majors are in a barn that's got 6' of snow in front of the doors, else I could look at it and possibly figure it out.
ii) When browsing parts catalogs online, I saw this diagram for Fordson's 'Automatic Clutch release Top Link'. I have one of those top links, but always assumed it was something my grandfather cobbled together out of other parts to make a semi-functioning top link (there's lots of stuff like this around my farm - being a child of the depression, my grandfather was never one to spend a few bucks on a new top-link if he could spend a day pillaging scrapyards and cobble something together that would do the job).
Below is a link to to top link parts diagram. Was this top link related to the same U-bracket clutch release mechanism, or was it something different? Hard to tell from the pictures, but it looks like a cylinder of some sort. Were lines plumbed from the top link to another cylinder on the tractor that would release the clutch if the top link compressed/retracted?
I'm very curious, especially as I can't seem to find any mention of this in the YT archives.
Cutch Release Top Link
I'm wondering if some of you experts can school me on the automatic clutch release mechanisms on the new majors. When I was a kid I asked my grandfather about the U-shaped bracket that hangs under the top link. If I remember right, he told me you could wrap it over the top link, and when plowing (or similar) the top link would lift it when it raised over a rock and automatically released the clutch. He said he never used it himself as the guy who he bought the major from told him it didn't work great in practice - by the time it tripped any damage was already done. Better to be quick with stopping raising it yourself when you felt an obstruction.
I never really questioned nor looked at it after that, but two things go me thinking about it:
i) If it works like stated above, how do you lift the implement when you come to the end of a run without tripping it? Both my majors are in a barn that's got 6' of snow in front of the doors, else I could look at it and possibly figure it out.
ii) When browsing parts catalogs online, I saw this diagram for Fordson's 'Automatic Clutch release Top Link'. I have one of those top links, but always assumed it was something my grandfather cobbled together out of other parts to make a semi-functioning top link (there's lots of stuff like this around my farm - being a child of the depression, my grandfather was never one to spend a few bucks on a new top-link if he could spend a day pillaging scrapyards and cobble something together that would do the job).
Below is a link to to top link parts diagram. Was this top link related to the same U-bracket clutch release mechanism, or was it something different? Hard to tell from the pictures, but it looks like a cylinder of some sort. Were lines plumbed from the top link to another cylinder on the tractor that would release the clutch if the top link compressed/retracted?
I'm very curious, especially as I can't seem to find any mention of this in the YT archives.
Cutch Release Top Link
