1949 Allis Chalmers B - 3 Point Hitch Repair/Fabrication

This tractor came with parts of a 3 point hitch. For the most part it appears like a farm-grown affair. Starting at the top, there is a solid cross bar (rockshaft) maybe 1-1/2" in diameter behind the seat that is most definitely farm-made, since the one end is roughly cut with an acetylene torch. The other end is the mill-sheared end. Who knows, maybe Allis Chalmers did make it and just left the one end rough. Don't get me wrong, the work someone put into this is very impressive. I just don't know that Allis Chalmers made the parts. Hanging off the rockshaft are two vertical lift arms. They look to be factory made but it's anyone's guess which factory made them. The curved drawbar on the tractor has two 1/2" thick "tabs" welded to it that are the anchors for the draft arms (red bars in the photo below). I bought the Ford 8N draft arms from a fellow tractor club member.

I bought two 7/8" link pins off Amazon, drilled 7/8" holes in the two tabs (that was fun - using an ancient Milwaukee Wrist Wrecker 3000 drill motor), and mounted the link pins.

The next step was to remove the top rockshaft that was bent, and attempt to straighten it. Of course to get the rockshaft out, I had to remove the seat back.

I used my Harbor Freight 25 ton press and it seems to have done the job fairly well. It was difficult to see how straight I got the bar because of the various things welded to the bar.

It's not perfect but is much better than it was.

Here is another photo of the top assembly.

Next I made some bushings for the non-adjustable leveling/lift arms. I made them from bronze so they would wear instead of the lift arm castings.

OD of the bushings was slightly less than an inch and the bore was 5/8".

The photo below shows where the bushings go in the bottom holes of the lift arms.

The only thing left to make is a top link. The mounting point on the rockshaft is very strange, so I can't just use a standard top link. I ended up modifying an old top link I had laying around that had already been bent up and messed with a lot.

I cut two 5/16" pieces of flat bar and drilled a 5/8" hole through each.

Below shows a mock-up of the top link with the two pieces of bar stock clamped in place.

Here is the finished product. Yes, it hangs off the back quite a bit. If it becomes a problem, I may need to shorten things up. All in all though it works well.