Pittsburgh equipment

Eldon (WA) · Dec 21, 2014

I've never seen this brand around very much, but found (and bought) a nice disc like this the other day. I think it is around 10 ft wide. It has a wide spacing for the front serrated discs and a narrow spacing for the rear smooth discs. Anyone have any experience with this brand? It appears they made equipment rebadged for the major brands...anyone know which ones? I see they merged with Taylor-Way and are still making implements under a variety of names.

https://archive.org/details/Pittsburgh_Series_450_Disc_harrow_PW44399_

RGMartin · Dec 21, 2014

I have a 10 footer that my granddad bought new in the late 60s. Not a particularly well built machine. I still turn up pieces of it that were lost when I plow his farm.

The worst part was the can style spacers. One gets dented by a rock, you lose tension on the gang... If you don't notice before too long the nut works its way off and you are leaving a trail of parts.

It is on my short list of to dos, I have collected enough cast spacers from other discs to rebuild it properly.

Eldon (WA) · Dec 21, 2014

(quoted from post at 19:39:16 12/21/14) I have a 10 footer that my granddad bought new in the late 60s. Not a particularly well built machine. I still turn up pieces of it that were lost when I plow his farm.

The worst part was the can style spacers. One gets dented by a rock, you lose tension on the gang... If you don't notice before too long the nut works its way off and you are leaving a trail of parts.

It is on my short list of to dos, I have collected enough cast spacers from other discs to rebuild it properly.

I noticed the spacers are fairly large diameter...and the back gangs are loose. Maybe that is why this one wasn't used much since we have rocks! I wonder if you could cut pipe to slide inside and stiffen them up?

tim s · Dec 21, 2014

We sold Pittsburg equipment at the Deere dealership I worked at,, it was not so good...

John_PA · Dec 21, 2014

I have relatives that worked there and others who own a machine shop in Coraopolis that used to make parts for their tooling.

That being said...

I have a Pittsburgh cultivator. There is one in just about every farm yard around here. The Pittsburgh disks and plows were not as common-lots of rocks around here-

http://www.clpdigital.org/jspui/bitstream/10493/844/1/Pittsburgh_Forgings.pdf

The company built lots of good casting and all kinds of heavy duty stuff. Designing farm equipment that was heavy enough? Nope! It was in the design where they were flawed.

That being said, I think I have a grinder that came from the factory, used to dress pieces before final sandblasting.

RodinNS · Dec 22, 2014

Yeah..... I have one of those orange pricks. Just like the one pictured. You can't keep the gang bolts tight. The spools bend so much that they don't support the disc blades... and it's just one great big rock picker... then you rip all of the scrapers off. You can't keep a hitch on it to save your life... and the last thing that disc will ever do is level. After I built a proper flotation hitch for it... it kind of works... but it's still the poorest disc we ever had. The old IH 37's and Bush Hog's of the same size were quite good by comparison. This Pittsburg is always chewing up bearings and bending/breaking gang bolts.
I also have a Taylor-Way 670 9' offset. That's a reasonably good disc...

Rod

RodinNS · Dec 22, 2014

No... these things are formed from tin... with ends in them to center them on the gang bolt. Not much you can do short of getting a complete new set of spools or making your own.

Rod

Pittsburgh equipment

Eldon (WA)

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RGMartin

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Eldon (WA)

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tim s

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John_PA

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RodinNS

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RodinNS

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