Tilling thick sod

The coulters are very important to cut up all that vegitation on top so it passes through the plow. However, in heavy soils sometimes you get by better without them, but now that you disked already, too late. The coulters should be big, like, 18-20 inches. I suspect you have little worn out coulters on the old plows, and they often do more harm than good. Big coulters, & run them almost to the bottom of the furrow.

An IHC 720 or JD 2800 has a lot more clearence, & that is what you really need.

Good luck.
--->Paul

Three point plows can be bad a plugging because the rear plow is close to the front plow. I've been happier with the AC 2000 4/3 bottom I bought last year it has three times the distance between plow bottoms on my 3 point plow and I can plow thigh high corn stalks without it plugging. The my Case three point two bottom plow (on a smaller tractor), I had to chop the corn stalks, the disk them, to keep from plugging every 50 feet. That didn't prevent plugging, just made it less often. the 520 and 720 IH semimounted plows are even more open and so harder to plug. Their plow beam is three feet above the top of the plow bottom and the plow bottom is hung down on a small bar that lets all the weed and cornstalks pass by without plugging. In this case bigger is definitely better than small. Been there, done all that.

Gerald J.

The coulter shaft should swivel 20 or 30 degrees each side of straight to the rear. So it can move out of the way of beginning plugs. Its arm should be set so that when the coulter blade is parallel to the left face of the plow (e.g. direction of motion) that the coulter blade is about 3/4" outside the plow. Front to back position and up and down are adjusted some by the nature of the soil Probably having the axle a couple inches in front of the front tip of the plow share and between one and two inches above the front tip of the plow share is a good place. Too close up and down and it won't let tree roots pass, too far and it won't cut deep enough. Too close front to back and it will cause more plugging than it helps. too far out front it will probably help keep the plow from digging in.

Your three point plow should pull itself into the ground if you tip it forward by shorting the upper link and then level it by shortening the right lift link. Plowing is dependent on that forward end of the plow share being a bit lower than the rest of the plow to dig in. At least that's how it works with my dad's one horse plow on a garden tractor, the three point plow on my MF-135 and my AC2000 3 bottom semimounted plow on my 4020.

Gerald