[AT] Odd rod on a WD Allis?

[Chuck Bealke]

On 1/23/2010 7:25 AM, Indiana Robinson wrote:
> One of the guys on my Allis Chalmers list posted this question:
> ---------------------
> I found a strange attachment on a WD at the link below and can't
> identify it. Would you guys take a look at the rod that seems to
> becoming from the vicinity of the draw bar to the top of the front
> wheels and tell me what it is.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RogerTractorLarge.jpg
> ---------------------
> All I could come up with was maybe some kind of a brace for the final
> drive like to a loader bracket etc? I cannot tell if there is one on
> both sides. I have never seen one before.
>
>    
Y'all,

Sure looks like the tractor is hooked to a rope trip plow.  These had 
adjustment handles just like the implement in the picture.  It looks 
like the front of the upright rod is a trip rope attachment point.  The 
strange front of the plow hitch might be a protective plow release to 
let go in case the plow encountered an unmoving rock, and the reason the 
trip rope was attached to that handle instead of the seat might have 
been to keep from jerking the back of the seat when the plow releases.  
A little background may explain why I hazard such a guess.  The picture 
flat reminds me of my very first field plowing.  This was with a AC WC 
with a hard pulling AC rope trip plow, a pairing which looked in many 
ways like the iron in the picture. I fast learned the hard way that when 
you felt that quick, awful sinking in a low, soft spot in an otherwise 
dry field, it was often too late to pull the trip rope and a bad time to 
stop forward motion.  As luck would have it, the plow had one of those 
hitches that would release the plow when you pressed on the top of it.  
So I rigged a quick plow release from the seat.  First, I wired an 
eyebolt attached to the bottom of a thin square board to the top of the 
hitch so that the board would release the plow pronto when you pressed 
down on the top it from the tractor seat. Then I attached the top of  
the board ('nother little eyebolt and short piece of twine) somehow 
close to the seat where I could reach back, grab and push down to set 
the tractor free of the plow. As I recall, it took a fair bit of 
experimenting - and untimely releases when the boy-filled bouncing seat 
caught the top of the board - to position the board right.  But it 
worked and saved me a possibly career altering request for a repeat pull 
out.  (I kept a long chain on the tractor to pull the plow out from 
firmer ground.)   Also learned to use older and weaker baling twine to 
attach the plow trip to the tractor seat.  The first time the plow was 
released in a wet spot, the trip rope from the released plow pulled the 
tractor seat as violently as fast, and the newbie operator was almost 
launched off the tractor when the rope broke.

Chuck Bealke
Dallas, TX