Cub Cadet 129 hitch design
 

I poorly described this in the 782 post. Here is a mock up of what I am trying to make. My goal is to be able to hook up to a small trailer, lift it and drive away. I had planned on doing upper arms as well, but if mounted on the lift shaft,they interfere with the fenders. With a 12" rod on the lift it gets 6" of travel. The ball will need to be higher, if mounted on a plate like in the picture is still pretty low and the 6" will probably not be enough to get up to the coupling (the trailers have dollies and they don't go very low), that should be doable. Any thoughts or suggestions? I was planning on doing the arms in angle iron
Thanks

Have a sleeve hitch adapter? I can make an adapter for a ball for the end.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...b.jpg~original

My suggestion would be to make something to attach to the trailer tongue to reach the lower tractor and use a pin instead of the ball. Or do what Jeff did and get a lower trailer.

Are all the trailers pulled down the road by the same truck?
If so you want the ball height low point to be the same height as the truck in question.
That is how I did my 2" receiver hitch on one of my 127's.
Please excuse the ugliness.

I use this setup with my sleeve hitch. Works very nicely.

I gotta agree with the other guys, get an "attachment" for your sleeve hitch adapter that the ball will mount to. If you need more "travel" in the ball, make the attachment longer.

Double07 - that's not ugly, it's beautifully simple and gets it up where I need it, so I could use my dolly/jacks and lower it on like a truck. I am going to take a serious look at this(but what am I going to do with my newly mounted rear lift?). For the sleeve adaptors they would need to lower enough to get the ball under the tongue and lift it enough to pick it up and pivot the dolly, which looks like it would work, but it would need more lift (longer rod in the lift). I also have the stuff around to make this relatively free and try to get it right where I need to be. :bigthink: Thanks for giving me more options to pour over!

If the ball needs to be as high as 007, why not mount the ball on the rod in the top link? It gets you your height and would look cleaner. You would still need to run flatstock down to the sleeve hitch adapter from the ball mount to keep the ball from rotating.

Bill

Edit: I thought about it more, lifting with the ball on the top link is one thing, pulling with it is another. Flatstockwould have to be run back to the top link pivot rod from the ball mount for strength. Having to add more bracing muddies up the cleaner look I was going for. The more I think about it, the more I don't like it, I think the other guys had you on the right track.

Funny - this morning I tried to slide a class 3 insert onto the rock shaft where the rod would normal go. It starts to fit, but does not slide on very far. With a little machining it looks like it would go on far enough to pin it. if it was left square the square stock of the insert would keep it from rotating.:bigthink: Going to let that simmer
I did some measuring last night and I am still confused myself on what I need, but the trailer coupling only gets to 11" off the ground, a ball adds about 2.5" so I need to lift to at least 14" to be able to rotate the dolly. Does a sleeve hitch adaptor get that high?

If your moving empty trailers then you could use a conventional sleeve hitch set up like pictured by FlatheadFord.
Leave the rod and vertical bars standard but extend the lower horizontal bars out far enough that you end up with the lift you desire.
You could even convert the lower "hoop" bars to a pipe pivoting in the lower axle housing bracket. Then have another bar or pipe or square tube coming out from the pipe as far as you need to the ball mount.
The vertical bars from the lift rod attaching to sides of that bar/pipe/tube.

Like a low profile lift boom.