Looking for some sage advice from folks that have rear remotes for their top and side link, doing brush hog or rear/box blade work.
My rear remote setup has three valves, two of which can float. The float position on both of those valves has the operator pushing and locking the lever all the way forward to be in float.
My question in particular—while I can certainly swap the hose positions any way I’d like to have the cylinder heading towards ‘out/extending’ or heading towards ‘in/retracting’ (while going ‘to’ float), what makes the most sense for brush hog and blade use if you wish to be floating the top and side link? (…or does it even really matter?) And a semi-related side question, what’s the best way to leave adjusted the manually adjustable side link I’ve now moved over to the other side? (mid-way seems logical)
PS. and a shout out to Brian at Fitrite for quality cylinders and really helpful support after the fact. I boogered up a hose due to my poor routing and he’s got two on the way to me already.
Whether it’s a temporary ban, permanent ban, or self imposed ban I would like to see NHSleddog return as he was a knowledgeable contributor. Admittedly, I don’t see every post and this isn’t my site so maybe there’s a valid reason for whatever is going on.
Getting back to the original question, possibly there’s some “standard” configuration, I don’t know. I know my dealer did mine as a turn key job and had it set up for forward = in/up, backward = out/down. While that may seem intuitive (push the valve handle the direction you want the cylinder to move) it was counterintuitive to me due to decades of using the 3 point control where moving the valve handle through the arc forward/down = down, backward/up = up. So I swapped the hoses to make backward movement of the valve handles = up/in. That also means forward is out/down and pushing forward past the detent is float so that made more sense to me as well. That’s based on absolutely nothing other than my preference.
So far as the mechanically adjustable side link, which of course is now on the left side, my default preference is to have it set such that full up on the hydraulic link = level. The hydraulic link moves at least a bit every time I park the tractor overnight or longer even if I don’t drop it on shutdown. Also, when I shut it down for the day I relieve the pressure on all hydraulic circuits including top and side link, which proactively causes it to move. When I start up, pulling the sidelink all the way up reliably brings it to level every time. For mowing, quick touch ups with the box blade, chipper, generator (which are the primary uses of the 3 point for me) I find the ability to reliably return to level at any point in time or place in 2 seconds or less is preferable. Again, strictly personal preference.
I have one float, two center return. I often float the toplink brush hogging because the “economy” brush hog we have provides very little top link movement and I brush hog some very rough and uneven terrain. At times, I’ll switch the float valve temporarily to the sidelink: specifically when pulling gravel from the edge of the road back to the center with the backblade as that allows the blade to follow any changes in contour.
If I’m working on a road or trail where there’s an advantage to being able to tilt in either direction but dead level isn’t important, which is often the case crowning and ditching, I’ll set the mechanically adjustable link for level around the middle of the hydraulic link travel.
For ditching with the backblade or boxblade, at times I’ll adjust the mechanically adjustable link and hydraulic link to their maximum travel in opposite directions to maximize tilt.
For 40+ years prior to last summer when top/tilt was added to the L, I adjusted mechanical side links as the only method of adjustment, and although the hydraulic sidelink is awesome, I’m not above adjusting the mechanical link now and then to fit the job at hand. Honestly, if I wasn’t planning to adjust the mechanically adjustable side link occasionally, I would have left the fixed side link on the left side.
