all hitched up

[thebuildist]

A friend of mine is a plumber whose knees are getting bad. So to help with larger items like water heaters he bought a Craftsman riding lawn mower that he intends to pull a small trailer with.

I volunteered to help out by putting a trailer hitch on it.

The Craftsman is built around a square/cubic box made of heavy sheet metal. Attaching a trailer hitch is challenging, because there's nothing beefier than 1/8" thick to attach to.

So I created a heavy-ish shackle wide enough to attach to the outer faces of the cube/box. Attach the ball tongue to the shackle, attach the shackle to to cube. Same approach, both front and rear.

It turned out pretty good, and plenty strong for this application.

Bob

[DavidBarkey]

Finally a Craftsman with balls .

[JSinMO]

Finally a Craftsman with balls .

[MattA]

Finally a Craftsman with balls .

Craftsman (Sears?) once sold good beefy garden tractors. It was probably before I was born a friend of mine restored his grandfather's.

[Eugen]

@thebuildist I had one of those Craftsman mower tractors, given to me by my sister, and not knowing anything about tractors I bolted a 1/8 thick plate to the front, to one side, as a makeshift blade to push some gravel. I wish I could find a video of it, it was hilarious how it bent, and how I kept on trying to do that gravel with it. But for pulling a load it should be great!

[MattA]

Finally a Craftsman with balls .

Craftsman (Sears?) once sold good beefy garden tractors. It was probably before I was born a friend of mine restored his grandfather's.

It was a sears suburban with a 16hp tecumseh engine.