Building the hay rake that Harry didn't

Feel free to tell me if this crazy. I bought the good D-EO-20 rake a couple of weeks ago. I still have my old D-EO-20 sitting there. I have wanted a 25 because they are a foot wider but never have been able to find a good one that was reasonably priced.I could use the extra foot when raking hillsides because when your haybine cuts 10" wide and your rake is 8" wide, when you get on a hillside combining two windrows and the rake drifts down hill you either end up leaving hay because the rake isn"t wide enough or you have two windrows side by side which is too wide for the baler because the rake wasn"t wide enough to combine the two windrows together. My idea was to take my old rake and cut each side of the frame and add 6"-8" in on each side. Of course I would have to lengthen the tine bars and add a sweeper bar on each side as well as adding some teeth. Since the lift frame had already been broken long before I got it I would probably box the frame in to give it extra strength since it would be carrying extra weight. I am a certified welder so really all I would be out is time,metal,and some parts. Do any of you see a reason why it wouldn"t work?

I got a reason for ya. Too much work! Is your hay so thick and lush you don't want to use the tin funnel flaps and narrow the swath a foot? Where I was haying, it wouldn't dry as good as letting it all fly out the rollers as it wanted. BUT... I had a 9 foot haybine, with an 8 foot rake... and it all worked well together. When I was young and inoccent, the neighbor, who worked at a local dealership, told me the IH 1109's were the best, cornered well, simple, great rollers, easy and cheap to repair, and my little 40-45 horse AC's powered it just fine- and the antique rake worked with it like a pair of new machines.
So... a labor saving idea here? Go buy a 9 foot mower!
Disc plows... ground drive rakes.... i gotta get outta here....

I"ve got it set as to throw as narrow of a windrow as possible out the back of the haybine. The rake isn"t a ground drive, it"s a 3pt hitch pto rake. I have never used a ground drive rake. I"ve never even considered it...I"ve got too many corners to rake. I just always thought you could do a neater and cleaner job using a 3pt rake.

Agh, Jason, I am confusing myself again. There are 2 'ground drives' out there huh? One powered by tires, the other 'ground' pto postition on the fergie transmissions... Or does this one go at 540rpm? I don't want one of those, I want a ground speed pto one... someday...

It is a ground speed pto one. Oddly enough though, I have used it behind my 175 on ground speed and the ground speed on it is much slower than my TO20. I was running the 175 in first or second gear high range and it was too slow. I ended up running it in 1st high on live power idling the engine and it still turned it slower than the 20 does in 3rd gear.

Hum. Since the speed of the rake goes by ...rotation of the tires...right? You got super tall tires on the 175? And low profiles on the 20? I always thought they would be the cat's pajamas... but maybe that's why they dropped the line?

16.9x28 on the 175,11.2x28 on the TO20. I know there would be some difference but we are talking extreme differences between the two in ground speed. I used to think that there was a difference in the ground speed between a TO20 and TO30 because both rakes I have now turn faster than the D-EO-20 that I grew up with. That one was a later model that didn't have the idler on the belt, but I found out that there were a couple of pulley sizes used on those rakes. One of the pulleys was for use behind a 9N or 2N so I imagine since the rake would be used in 2nd gear most of the time on those 3 speeds that the pulley was made to slow the rake down. I figure that's what we had because it did turn slower than the ones I have now behind a a TO30.