Limbs can break

[Gaden]

"Ok, here's the "deal". Sam Mac designed and made the first set of braces. He was the one who saw the issue, and designed a "fix". It really shouldn't be that hard to see what the deal is. The braces are for sale now through xtreme, but it seems that a lot of people think that they can do it themselves for less than the selling price, yet they seem to need to know how to make them first. If you want to make your own parts, then make them. I don't think it's fair to ask the designer to give you the specs for their product for free. No, the OP didn't ask Sam directly to hand them over.... he just asked someone else who either paid for them, or copied Sam's design, to hand them over. It's all the same thing. Before Sam designed them, I never say ANYONE put a brace on the rear of an SGT. So, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that all SGT braces are copied from Sam's. It's no different than asking a manufacturer to tell you how to build their product so you don't have to pay for it.

Sorry this is kind of a hot topic for me (even though I have no skin in the game), but I have built a lot of things, and being in business for myself for many years, it always irritated me when someone wanted me to share my information for free because they didn't want to pay me for the work. I do it here because I want to, and for the most part, people here are just playing with a "toy", and share the same "hobby" as I do. I have declined information to people when I found out they were just trying to fix a Cub to flip it. That's where I personally draw the line. "

When I first got my tractor home and was giving it a good look over as one does with any new toy, I noticed there was only two (per side) bolts holding the rear to the frame and that this connection was a good 6 inches above the center of the axle, which just looked very weak to me and immediately formed in my head how I would build a plate to extend the frame so as to catch all of the bolts in the carrier. I was a sheet metal worker for 34 years, and as a foreman and superintendent, it was exactly the kind of thing I was used to doing. Had I known at that time that this really was a problem, I would have made the plates and had them on way before I was a member here. But due to procrastination and telling myself that the tractor was 22 years old and had no issues, I never followed through. Fast forward three years, and after two days of using it to push dirt, I discovered I had broken all four of the suspect bolts. After dissassembly, I took my measurements, made a detail of the parts (almost exactly as I had envisioned three years before) and went to a shop I used to work at where they burned out my plates on their laser cutter. ($48) In a thread I started (Well, it happened to me) to ask about the tapered bearings in the differential, I said pretty much the same thing;

"As a matter of fact, when I first got this tractor, I questioned how good an idea it was to have only four bolts (yeah, I know, there's another bracket on the hydro) and thought I would make up a plate that utilizes all of the bolts in the carrier, guess I should have at that point."
So, It's not something I just now made up.
Now we have a guy who didn't want to buy pre-made braces because they wouldn't work for his particular application and simply wanted the bolt pattern, which I was happy to supply. After all it was my concept and my design, I should be able to do what I want with it.