Make hay while the sun shines: new tedder!

Bought a bigger hay tedder at the auction on saturday.  There were two six-basket tedders at the auction, and the other one sold for $6500, so I was figuring this one (that had highway wheels) was going to go for as much or maybe more... but it didn't.   the Fella th800 that I bid on ended up selling for $2200.  Part of the reason that it went so low is that it was missing teeth; about 10 of them were broken, and the tires were in very poor shape.  But someone had greased it, and all of the bearings looked good, and the hydraulic cylinders didn't leak, so...

My old tedder is only a 2 basket, so a 6 basket is a substantial steup up, with a working width around 20'.  So it only took 2.5 hours to ted the main field.  Big improvement.

$110 in replacement teeth, $400 for new tires all around, $60 in assorted nuts and bolts (replacing the shear bolts with proper grade, replacing too-long bolts with the proper length, replacing standard nuts with lock nuts where called for, about 2 hours of wrench time and it's out on the field tedding.

The unit itself seems to be missing a guard rail that goes around it; the mounting brackets are still there, so I'll probably make a replacement out of electrical conduit when I'm done tedding the field.

New hay tedder from bruce king on Vimeo.