Building Pull Type Round Bale Carrier

big a

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Build one of the 2 wheeled bale toters to use behind my M Farmall. Starting with an old car dolly type frame I bought at an auction, and an old 3 point bale mover I acquired somewhere. Plan to use a hand cranked winch to tip the bale back.

Built a lot of stuff over the years, but never one of these. Thought I'd ask all the experts out there to see if there are any pitfalls to avoid when designing and building one of these.
 
Why not have bale forks mounted on the cart and use the HY system to raise and lower for picking up and letting down so you can just haul the bale around then unload where you want it.
 

Be sure and get the geometry worked out so that when the bale is the transport position, the entire weight of the bale is ON the tractor drawbar. If the weight is mostly behind the carrier wheels, the weight of the bale will be LIFTING on the tractor drawbar, and you will have very limited traction.
 
I second that. Why not let the tractor's hydraulics do the work? A winch will rust up/not work well if left sitting outside. Getting the geometry set up for a hydraulic cylinder to work right will be more trying than just bolting a winch up and cranking away, but I have the feeling that after cranking a few bales up with a winch, converting to hydraulic will seem more lucrative. You could crank the winch with a hydraulic motor but the M might not have the 2 way hydraulics to get the winch back down without switching hoses. Jim
 
Thanks for the input guys. The main reason for the winch is because I have to haul bales up to 2 miles in the winter, and with a hand winch, I can pull this behind my pickup. My M does not have 2 way hydraulics so I would be pretty limited on how I could use a cylinder also.

Don't want to spend any more on this than I have to. This is just to feed the wife's horses, so this is a money wasting proposition all the way around. :eek:

Were it up to me and my M1 Garand, I wouldn't be doing this at all!
 
Ours started out with a cylinder, and worked great behind the D-17s. A few years later we added an inline hydraulic hand pump mounted on the carrier for occasional use behind a pickup. We just hook up the hoses to the hand pump instead of the tractor hydraulics. Both methods get a lot of use.
 

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