[ddmckee54]

OK... I'm guessing that there's a shaft that's not shown which connects the lift cylinder to the pivot arms for the wheel assemblies. It looks like you've got hangers that will allow you to extend the shaft out to the wheel assemblies on the wings. Or will the wings just be along for the ride when you lift the center section? If you are lifting with the wing wheels too, how are you going to deal with that shaft when the wings fold? If you've got the centerline of the shaft and the centerline of the hinges lined up correctly, is a u-joint all you need?

As far as bulking up the tractor, if you're just looking for weight I've got a suggestion.... Google "shotgun reloading supplies snake shot for sale". (Or rat shot, same thing.) I used it to add some weight to the tires for my Bruder Manitou 2150 RC conversion, that stuff is great. I had to order a bag of it on-line, I can't remember if it was 20 or 25 pounds, I think it was about $40-$50 - but you get a lot of added weight in a small volume. The snake/rat load shot is a maximum of 1.5mm in diameter and goes down to grain of sand size, so it will fit/fill all the small nooks and crannies.

I 3D printed containers that fit through the wheel opening and also fit around my printed drive wheel/hub. I calculated the volume of the containers at their original size and realized that even using a conservative fill estimate of 50% I woulld be adding over 8 oz. of weight per wheel. I had to reduce the size of the containers, the current size adds about 2.5-3 oz. per wheel. I just used the model rail-roaders' trick of gluing things together with diluted white-glue. I filled the containers with the snake shot, then dribbled on the 50-50 white-glue/water mix until they were completely full, then set things aside for a week to dry. Once dry, everything was bonded together and no amount of banging on the table top would dislodge any of the snake shot.

Just be careful when adding the snake shot, you spill some of it and that crap will go everywhere - DAMHIK.

Don

One more question - in your section view showing the lift linkage the front disc gang supports all appear to be facing the same direction but in the rear gangs they seem to be facing both directions. I assume that's the way they did it on the real thing, any clue as to why?