IH Tiller, More Mods.

[Ambush]

I got a 38" A2 tiller with the 149 a few years ago, but no mule drive, belts or corner drive gear box. After pricing out all the stuff, lack of availability and the fact that I already had a new 14 hp motor on hand, I set it up as self powered. And that's been working well. I was having the problem of the bearing carriers coming lose on the tine shaft. So I hatched a plan in my head to put outboard bearings on that shaft. This past week the plan got out of my head and onto the work bench.

Earlier in the summer I had scrapped an old MTD tiller and saved the tine mount shaft, tine hubs and the best tines. Also the shroud which was twelve gauge steel. As rarely happens a lot of that salvaged material lined up perfectly for my project. The shafts and hubs are 1 1/4" just like the IH tiller. Unbelievably and by total fluke even every hole that I thought I'd have to drill was in the right place and right size!!

I'll add pics from my phone of the progress so far. When this part of the project is done, I'll be figuring out a way to mount the tiller to the sleeve hitch so I don't have to remove the hitch and then fight the tillers arms into place. PITA.

[Ambush]

To start I had to pull the tine tube off one side so I could tighten the bearing carrier. That went well and I was pretty quick on to actual mods. The MTD shaft was about the perfect length when cut in half with one half for each side. I needed to extend down the tiller side plates and beef them up some. I cut two plates from the MTD shroud of the approximate size. With some measuring and fiddling, I had holes through the new side plates and a bearing location.

I decided to put skids on the side plates too. A large propane tank was the donor for them.

[Ambush]

Here I’ve got the semi finished side plates on and bearings located. I’m going to put one of the MTD hubs on each end with tines and that will extend the tiller just over two inches total for a full 40 1/2” tilling width. My ag tires are 38” outside to outside. Everybody g lines up great!

[Ambush]

Pretty much got done with this portion of mods. Everything lined up good. I had to put some bend in the donor tines to get them as close to the side plates as possible and I did gain over an inch on each end.

Next step is to put the tractor in the shop and come up with an efficient way to mount the tiller to the back. I go back and forth about building a Cat 0 or 1 three point and maybe that will come out of this venture too.

[Ambush]

Time to re-mate the tiller to the tractor. The bottom draw yoke on the tiller is the same width as the sleeve hitch mount because it was originally designed to mount there. It looks like it will be pretty easy to engineer a fast and easy mounting system. One where I don’t have to grub around the ground, tugging and pushing on the tractor and tiller to get two small pins into holes that I can’t see. Probably much like you see in the pics.

[Sam Mac]

Nice job. Do you think it may be to heavy for the lift? The self powered Cub 400 tiller had a trailing wheel and only lifted the front.

[Ambush]

Its been lifting it no problem for the last three years. I put a 2" hydraulic cylinder on the rear to replace the original lift cylinder and link. I may put a pair of depth limit tires out the back. On new, rough ground, when the rear tires drop into a hole or sharp dip then the tiller drops and digs hard and deep. But the skid shoes should limit that somewhat, so I'll wait to see.

[Ambush]

I got the tiller yoke mated to the sleeve hitch and I’m happy with the geometry. Now I can figure out the top link and how to attach it to the tiller.

[Ambush]

I had a turnbuckle laying around so I used that as the top link for now. The bearing bolsters are welded on so that’s about it for the tiller part of the winter project. I’ll have to wait till spring to try everything it out for proper function , before get carried away with paint.

I ordered a three spool valve to mount on the left side of the tractor to have options for future attachments. And once I have options, I’ll think of things to use them for.