Custom-Built Wheel Horse Attachments

Custom-Built Wheel Horse Attachments When Jerry Carra hauls gravel or firewood or blades snow or dirt with his Wheel Horse garden tractor, it’s with the aid of 12-volt power. An electric actuator makes lifting and dumping the 22 by 42 by 20-in. high wagon easy. A reversible 12-volt auto tarp motor adjusts Carra’s front blades. “I have a 2002 315 Wheel Horse that I built the attachments for,” says Carra. “My dump cart can be controlled from the tractor seat. I have a long-handled safety lock that I control with a cord, and a remote wired into the power cord for the actuator.” Carra simplified the actuator wiring by using a cigarette plug connector. He wired the female end into the tractor and the male end back to the trailer. Disconnecting power is as easy as pulling the lock on the ball hitch. “I mounted the actuator between the rear axle and the front of the box, just like a hydraulic cylinder is mounted under a gravel truck box,” says Carra. “A knob on the front of the cart releases the tailgate.” In winter, Carra adds a top with a tarp to keep snow off his firewood. “I can pull it right up to the house,” he says. “In the summer, I just pull a couple of pins and remove the cover.” Carra also added a trailer tongue rest to the hitch just behind the ball. It’s pinned to the hitch when not in use. “I pull a pin, and it drops down 90 degrees when I unhitch the trailer,” he adds. When Carra modified an old Craftsman blade to mount it on his Wheel Horse, no drilling or modifications to the tractor were necessary, as he used the existing holes to mount it. “I built push arms out of 2-in. channel iron and pinned them to existing holes in the frame, just forward of the rear wheels,” says Carra. “At the front of the tractor, the blade frame rests against a block mounted to the original front deck mower mount. It keeps the blade frame square.” He used a reversible auto tarp motor to raise and lower the blade. The motor sits on a steel plate, with legs bolted to the blade framework. One pulley is attached to the motor, and a second is at the base of the blade framework. A third pulley serves as an idler on the drive. “I made the pulleys on my lathe from a block of TIVAR,” says Carra. “It’s very wear and corrosion-resistant, but it can be worked like wood. Instead of a drive belt, I used an ordinary tie-down strap.” To maintain tension on the strap, Carra attached a pipe to the base of the blade frame, forward of the motor. A strap runs from the drive pulley arm through a clevis and pulley at the top of the pipe, then down to a heavy spring mounted to the motor’s base plate. This arrangement maintains tension on the lift-and-lower strap.  The pipe served an additional purpose. Carra mounted a 12-volt light at the pipe’s upper end. Springs mounted on the blade activate the light when the blade is fully up or down, helping ensure Carra doesn’t overpower the blade. “I have to adjust the angle of the blade manually,” says Carra. “However, vertical movement is controlled by a switch mounted to the side of the dash.” Carra also fabricated a simple canopy for the Wheel Horse. The round-and-square tubing frame mounts to the tractor’s drawbar. It’s an add-on he recommends to others. “I spent a lot of time in the high desert of Nevada and have been diagnosed with skin cancer,” says Carra. “The canopy is all I need to keep the sun off.” Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Jerry Carra, 104 Dogwood Dr., Grayson, Ky. 41143 (ph 606-474-4919).

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