Harbor Freight 3-point splitter - works good for me!

[deerefanatic]

Hi guys. I bought a 3-point mount tractor log splitter from Harbor Freight. Got it wednesday. For $500, it's a great deal. Works good, and the quality is surprisingly high. I will not that the bolts that hold the third-link mount are a very weak 4.8 grade metric bolts, and two of them broke off saturday! But, that's ok because I took the splitter in the shop, and just welded the third link on, so the bolts aren't necessary now! In retrospect, if I were to know that now, the first thing I would have done is gone to the hardware and bought some hardened metric bolts and thrown them cheesy ones away....

Speed: I think it's a bit slow for a hydraulic splitter, but the speed is entirely dependent on the speed of your tractor's hydraulics. Our 1850 Oliver (100 horse tractor) is much slower running this than our Ford 4000 Super Utility which has a monster hydraulic pump, and is only 50+ horse.. (Much quieter too as it's a gas VS diesel in the oliver....)

I've split up a cord or so of wood with it and am quite pleased..... It sure beats swingin' and axe, that's for sure!

 

[SolarAndWood]

I have an older similar model. If you are going through the remotes, you might it is much faster if you can go direct. I tee'd the lines going to the loader on my old Ford and it runs probably half again faster.

 

[Stephen in SoKY]

Congratulations! One less motor to keep running is a good thing to me. Like S&W;says, SCV's on the tractor are much slower than coming off the supply directly.

 

[deerefanatic]

On both of our tractors, not feasible to do that, as #1, they are farm tractors that have to switch back and forth between various roles fairly often, and #2, they both have transmission mounted pumps that have no external piping except for the hoses going to the couplers on back....

 

[SolarAndWood]

I used ball valves to make switching easier as this time of year it usually shares the 3 pt with the rototiller, box blade, rake and hoe. The hoe has a pto pump and a tank that is only connected to the frame with bolts. I'm considering an experiment to see if borrowing it for the splitter either decreases cycle time, lowers rpms required or both.

 

[Stephen in SoKY]

Matt, Are you certain there's no way to plumb Quick Disconnects between your SCV and the pump? I've farmed for 40 years and I've never seen a tractor this wasn't possible on. In my case, I use the QD's under the tractor installed for the front end loader. If you can avoid your SCV your performance will dramatically improve. Are you hooking into your remotes at the rear of tractor and setting your SCV to float or tieing it open?
This doesn't detract in any way from your ability to switch implements. I often split in the morning, disc ground at lunch, plant corn in the afternoon, rinse, repeat. I only brought 1 real tractor to my new place so it must be easily available for many tasks.

ETA: I just reread your OP, both of those tractors can be plumbed easily as I describe above. You're looking at less than $100 to dramatically improve performance and help protect the SCV's on your tractor.