[AT] New Holland sure thinks highly of their Ford parts :(

[Alan Nadeau]

My shooting club has a Ford 4000 that we use for road and range maintenance.  The 3pt hitch arms are the ones where you pull on a little cable lanyard and the end of the lower hitch arms slides out so you have some adjustment for hooking up.  On the left arm the locking assembly has pretty much gone kaput.  The spring inside looks to have broken in several places and the cable is about frayed through so it no longer locks the end of the arm properly.

Yesterday I went off to the local NH dealer to see about getting a new one.  The thing has to be bought as an assembly as, while getting it apart is easy, there is no real good way to put it back together.  That is not the same as saying it can't be done.

There are no machined parts in it, one crude forging, a small spring ($2-3 at the hardware store) a short piece of small but stiff wire cable with a couple stops swaged onto it and a steel ring to pull the cable with.  We're not talking high tech, tight tolerances here.

What we ARE talking is $110.11!   My butt got sore just thinking about it.

Do any of you guys know if anyone might make these things as an aftermarket part?  I was figuring maybe $35-45.  I'm 95% sure I can repair it but I just don't feel like putting my time into it right now.

New Holland part # is C7NNC882B if it might help.  I don't have squat for Google-fu so I have had no luck chasing anything down, no salvage yards anywhere around here.

Worst case I'll take the movable part out of the lift arm and figure out where the slot, that lets is move, ends when it is latched in place and bore a cross hole to intercept the slot and then just put a drawpin in there to hold it in place.  Pull the pin, hook up and push the moveable arm back in place and pin it.  Crude and pretty redneck, but workable.

Al Nadeau