There are several issues mixed-together in this thread.
1- “Specifications” for 3-pt hitch implements.
YEs… in recent decades there have been developed “specifications” as far as pin width and top-link height. BUT…. the 3-pt hitch was invented by Harry Ferguson in the late 1920s and he and Henry Ford had a ”handshake” agreement to share in the profits from sale of its use on N-Ford tractors. It was a HUGE improvement in that it allowed the use of multiple implements to be attached/removed from the tractor with simplified hook-ups and also allowed the use of a PTO driveshaft.
HOWEVER…the handshake agreement was violated by Ford and Harry decided to make his own tractors using his 3-pt invention….and he had to sue Ford for patent/contract infringement… which took almost 3 decades for settlement at which point every tractor and implement maker in the world had adopted the system and Harry and Ford ended up closing the lawsuit with a pittance payment. Harry was screwed out of the best and most-utilized system in the world that is still virtually universal. (Even the Euro system borrows from it.) The problem is not so much that implements haven’t conformed to their “standard”….as much as the “standard” is not very useful due to the decades of implement and tractor manufacturing that has gone on in the meantime that did not meet the so-called “standard”.
2-Quick-Htich
The Speeco type QH is now made by everybody’s brother and his chink …. and couch-potatoes who want to spend their couching on tractor-seats too lazy to get off and attach implements….or even to get off and install ONE TOP PIN…. or fail to remember they may also have to install a PTO driveshaft wants to complain about it.
The REAL problem as I see it is that we’ve created a problem on TOP of a solution with the QH/Pats/Euro/JD/AC hitch designs. Harry’s original design already IS the best solution as it easily adapts to each and every implement design existing….. the only problem is the tractor-operator who cannot BACK UP to the implement in perfect alignment. I am one of those.
If we could back up to that heavy implement in perfect alignment and pick up the lower arms and slip them onto the implement pins LEFT AND RIGHT both being perfectly the same distance from the tractor…. there’d be little problem for those of us willing to simply get OFF THE SEAT and take a few steps. (Gotta do that ANYWAY if you have a PTO right?)
The lower arms which have “sliding” pin-ends with lever-clips (which Pats copied in their design) would be a huge help. OTHERWISE if all those heavy implements we have were sitting on CASTERS so we could easily manuever them into perfect alignment with the lower arms so we could just attach the lynch-pins… then there’d be no problem, as far as I can see. (Of course, that would assume…(that word)…. we could all have the luxury of storing implements on concrete so we could maneuver castering pallets. Most people I know simply drop their implements on the ground somewhere…but if you are one of those people fortunate enough to be able to store your stuff indoors….on a flat floor…. a castering storage-pallet might also help you store them over in the corner and roll them out to the tractor when you want to attach them.)
So my solution is to ether Park all my implements on a castering-pallet-dolly (for example, my finish mower has rollers/wheels at all four points ….sorta like being on it’s own castering-dolly….. which makes installing it a breeze. Of course I have to get my butt off the damn tractor seat …but I have to do that anyway to attach the PTO. DOH. You tractor-seat-potatoes won’t like this idea of a castering-implement-pallet.)
In conjunction with lower-arm sliding pin-latches…… would be the Best Solution, in my opinion.
Unfortunately my 1996 tractor has plain lower arms and I just wish their aft ball-ends would slide-and-latch like later models offered. There was a participant in these forums who had a set I thought might replace my originals…but he sold them before I could get the measurements. I don’t know if Kubota or anyone makes any aftermarket lower arms with sliding attach-clip-ends.
