hay sweep

[sheeptick]

on those old sweeps that are made out of a truck chassis, the head is at the rear of the chassis, so when useing it the machine is going backwards but the tranny is in a forward gear, when it is going forward tranny is in reverse.how is this done? is the tranny turned around or what. thanks

 

[Anonymous-0]

Everything is the same....you sweep up the hay in the single reverse gear. You use the high speed gears to back up for another buck of hay. You want to be able to go backwards fast to save time and there is no chance of ramming a tooth in the ground going backwards.

 

[Allan in NE]

They are just like a Hyster fork lift.

The rear ends are flipped thereby giving the chassis four gears backwards and one forward.

Allan

 

[Allan in NE]

Dunno Eldon,

I'd guess you've never been on a hay sweep or a reversed truck chassis loader. That isn't how they worked at all.

Before the loader was mounted, the rear end and the operating controls were flipped, which would change the direction of the power flow. Reverse became forward and forward became reverse from the chassis's viewpoint.

Farmers used to do this if they had an old truck that wasn't being used for anything else. Gave 'em a "high speed" power source for gathering hay rather than mounting the loader on a slower moving tractor.

Allan

 

[Iowa_tire_guy]

Nothing like seeing someone buck hay at 20 mph. But it got over the land.

 

[Allan in NE]

Yeah,

Those old reversed trucks moved. :>)

We used Hs, Ms and a John Deere 60. A few years, used a straight buck sweep on a 1010 John Deere to feed the loader.

Road gear still seemed too darned slow. :>)

Allan

 

[Anonymous-0]

We used a 1937 G.M. Maple Leaf for our buck-rake. No doors made for an exciting ride. Wish I still had that truck. Neighbour just restored his father,s Ford A buck-rake.

 

[Allan in NE]

I always thought it was so slick the way those old buck sweeps unloaded by swinging the gate forward.

Remember those irons that dug into the ground while backing up? :>)

Allan

 

[Anonymous-0]

I have to admit we never used one, but we had a B John Deere with a sweep and it had the 2 speed tranny....we used it because the high speed reverse got you back for another buck of hay real fast. That's where you made up the time because you never had to turn the thing around. Seems a reversed truck would be aweful slow backing up...pushing a loaded sweep of hay for the FarmHand to stack was it's main purpose....maybe we are talking about two different jobs here. Pushing a buck of hay too fast in our field conditions would have been very dusty and dangerous!

 

[Leroy]

Those hay sweeps or as was commely called a buck rake were mounted on either end of an old car chassie, trucks were never used depending on who was doing the conversions, most were mounted on the back end tho. And the transmissions were never changed around, you use reverse to load if it was mounted on the back end and then foward to go for the barn and hay was never piled in the field with them. We had a 1929 Buick 4 door car that had the back seat cut off at the back edge of the center door post but 2 feet of the roof was left on as weather protector as when the buckrake was not being used for hay or straw it was used to move machinery from farm to farm, would just slide the forks up under the disc or cultipacke, raise and head down the road. In the off season when the rake would not be used the rake was removed and a wood pickup (homemade) was mounted in its place, that old buick hauled a lot of cow and hog feed from the feed mill with that bed. 8 mile to feed mill. So think, how would you be using the buckrake for anything else if that transmission was bessed up being reversed. Low was fast enough to load and with that old Buick Dad would walk the loads of hay out of the field in high gear while most of the buckrakes were made with Model A Fords and they had trouble getting the load out in low gear and keeping the front end on the ground. It would have been unthinkable to reverse the transmission for 1 speed forward and 3 in reverse.How would you ever get to town doing that? They were driven to town after parts on so on instead of the family car and no one had a pickup truck at that time. Those mounted on the front end you had trouble seeing the road to go to the barn. In using ours Dad would start ours down the windwrow in reverse, set the hand throttle step out on the running board to look at the back, row, without having to turn around, at ene of load would just get back in ,stop raise the load and put in high gear babk to the barn.

 

[Anonymous-0]

It looks like I misread sheeptick's initial post. It appears that there were at least 2 different styles of "Buck Rakes/Sweeps" from different regions. Our area used buck rakes like Leroy's with the loads deposited on rope slings on the barn floor. Bundles were then lifted to the mow with a device called a car which ran on a track. When the load was in the right position, the load was tripped and hay mowed away. Made for a free sauna and workout.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Does anyone have a link to a photo of one of the car/truck buck rakes? I got an idea what y'all talking about from having seen horse & tractor versions, still can't quite picture that contraption

 

[Leroy]

We did not use the rope slings on the floor of the barn, those were only used on the flat bed wagon loaded with a hay loader, then pulled to the mow. With the buck rake and most of the time we used a hay fork to pull the hay up to the mow from either the wagon bed or the barn floor where the buckrake deposited the load and the buck rake driver whent after anouther load while the barn crew pulled the hay to the mow. 1 person on the fork to stick it and pull it back, one on a tractor to pull the fork to the mow and the person that stuck the fork would do the triping of the fork and 2 possibly 3 people in the mow to work the hay back to the corners of the mow while keeping in level in the barn.

 

[Leroy]

Wish I had a picture of our old Buick buck rake but I don't. Would not know how to post if I did.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Hi Leroy -
We never used those hay forks on our farm, but I have 3 or 4 that I've collected over the years. It never fails to amaze me at the diversity of methods used in every aspect of farming across not only North America, but Europe as well.