Oliver 550 Reese Hitch?

Hi all,

I have an Oliver 550 that we use around the farm for various things from dragging to mowing to hauling our water wagon etc...

The water wagon has a ball style hitch, So does the horse trailer but a different size ball....the Mower and drag are 3pt.

I was told that if I was going to have a swinging drawbar I should remove it during 3pt operations (I already bent part of my 770 swinging drawbar while using the aftermarket 3pt) to prevent interference between the 3pt and the drawbar.

I don't want to do that all the time and I don't need a swinging drawbar so I am thinking what may work the best is to make my own reese hitch where I can swap out a drawbar vs ball style quickly and easily and it wouldn't interfere with the 3pt.

The bottom of the pto/transmission housing assembly has a set of 4 bolt holes.

I am thinking I could make a heavy steel plate to mount to those holes and the reese hitch could be welded on that plate.

Has anyone ever tried this? Any advice?
Below are pictures of the mounting area and the Reese hitch blank and also an extension and a multi hitch adapter to give you an idea what I'm thinking....

Thanks!

Certainly looks like it would work fine. The build-up in the casting where the holes are should be plenty strong, and the receive hitch will get things out of the way of 3 point implements.

Anyone have any advice on how thick the plate steel should be for bolting on to the tractor and having the the reese receiver welded to?

The holes are 3.5" apart side to side and 6" apart front to back.

So if the 2" tube is welded in the center there will be 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch on each side before the hole.

We have a 550 with a hitch bolted to those holes and it works
great. No 3 pt interference

Got the tube and measurements and took them in to my welder/fabricator, should have the finished product back next week, I'll let you know how it turns out.

Well it took a bit longer to get it fabricated because we figured out the bolts wouldn't have room to turn next to the hitch tube once welded onto the plate. So we had to small tubes for each bolt to go in that were as tall as the hitch tube and I will use longer bolts to bolt the hitch on. The hitch is done and I will be able to pick it up on Friday when I am back home. Looking forward to getting it on the tractor so I can see how it works.

I'll post some pictures as soon as I get it and get it mounted.

Patrick

Well finally getting around to posting some pics. I have to say I am loving the hitch so far. easy to change for hooking up different implements based on different ball sizes or a regular drawbar and if I am running something on the 3pt I just pull one pin and the hitch is completely out of the way.

I am thinking I am going to do this on my 770 too rather than trying to fix the swinging drawbar that got bent by my aftermarket 3pt hitch when it caught underneath the swinging drawbard while I was mowing, it's super convenient on the 550, just have to figure out the mounting logistics for the 770.

Here are some pics





You can see from the last pic that we had to use spacers on the bolts because there wasn't enough space between the receiver tube and the head of the bolt to be able to tighten the bolt so we needed the spacer and longer bolts.

You did a neat job on the hitch. My concern is that the portion of the final drive housing where the hitch is attached may not be strong enough to support a heavy load cantilevered that far rearward without the benefit of any vertical bracing connected to the three point top link rocker as the designers did on the original hitch. I would be reluctant to put a very heavy down force on an area that was designed originally for only rearward forces. Good luck.

(quoted from post at 19:43:22 09/05/13) You did a neat job on the hitch. My concern is that the portion of the final drive housing where the hitch is attached may not be strong enough to support a heavy load cantilevered that far rearward without the benefit of any vertical bracing connected to the three point top link rocker as the designers did on the original hitch. I would be reluctant to put a very heavy down force on an area that was designed originally for only rearward forces. Good luck.

Click to expand...

Good point, I may need to work on a modification for that. Right now we aren't putting any heavy tongue loads on the ball, just empty trailers and such so it won't be a concern in the near term.

I'm actually looking for a shorter extension too. They just didn't have anything shorter in stock at any of my local stores when I was putting the kit together.