CA plow will not suck into the ground.

I don't know what is happening but my plow will not plow. It looks like the entire plow is back heavy and the points won't angle down into the dirt. I had to break out the old JD trip plow to get the job done. Any ideas?

If you are fully beamed and it won't start in then it could be hard ground. I know mine will only plow a few inches deep in real hard ground even fully beamed.

I have the winging adjustment set about right. No matter what Ido I can not get it angled enough towards the front to get the points in the ground. The shares are worn pretty good but I didn't think it would be bad enough it wouldn't even go in the ground! I may have some time to work on it this weekend. I will post pics if I get things working right.

"shares are worn pretty good"  Want to bet a new or re tipped set of shares fixes your problem?  The two bottoms are worse than the threes and fours because of light weight but no amount of adjusting fixes worn out throw away type sharesn or those older type fitted shares that have lost "suck" The old type shares can have a lot of metal left  but lose the suck needed to put the plow in the ground. I have said (probably too) many times here that fully 80-90% of the problems I see at plow days and shows is worn out shares,Find a hard somewhat level place and set the plow down and get off and look, you will see that the points are worn so as to be turned upward. I have put a few of them in the ground at plow days by setting the frog on a rock and knocking  the points down with a 10lb sledge.  You can heat and bend the points down also as long as] they are not completely worn out or you can re tip them. Bottom line is  the JD pull type went in the ground, and your CA plow will also, once you fix the shares.

I had to have my points welded up to make mine work.

Greg you have it backwards. You don't raise the right tires, you raise the left tires to tilt the tractor as if its right wheels are in the previous furrow. Then you set the plow frame so the bottoms are mostly level with a tilt to the front. When you shorten the top to tilt the plow frame forward (points down) that lifts the left bottom and you have to lengthen the left lift link to level the plow again. The two adjustments interact.

I think its OK for the first pass to plow a little shallower, that way the first pass doesn't make so much of a ridge turning dirt over on level ground. But it should be possible but a lot more bother to make the first pass as deep by adjusting with the tractors not on blocks but then the adjustment has to be redone with the blocks under the right side tires to finish the field.

Back about 1951, my dad built a garden tractor to pull a 1 horse plow. Initially it wouldn't dig in, so he took the plow to a country black smith for sharpening. The black smith heated the plow share and bent the tip down. It worked for the next 45 years at least. The tip bent down is what makes some AC shares into Deep suck as described in the plow bottoms book.

Gerald J.

Actually the blacksmith does weld on a new point and edge. They just weld it with the forge. Before Dad bought new Oliver radex plows our local blacksmith died and Dad took them to a welding shop. Unles you find a blacksmith that is Amish they probably do not have the skill to set the points.  Both the blacksmith and the local welding shop did a lot of plow points and knew how the point needed to end up.  The blacksmith did hammer out the points a few times before adding new material.

Edited by Dick L - 08 Jun 2011 at 12:05pm

Just a place to double check , I know someone else said the beam. You maybe over beamed.  Double check to see that the plows look like they are trying to nose in. The beam is used to control the front to back level of the plow. Turning the beam to make it longer doesn't make the back go deeper, it stops the points from sucking (pulling) the plow down. I was looking to make the forth bottom go down and had my over beam. It was acting like the ground was too hard.  Made a mess of the part of the field.  So I stopped, look at where the beam setting was to start and reset the beam. After a few more turns to  level the plows and they worked very good until, I got to some stony Ground would not go down but the difference is the whold plow was jumping and the tractor was acting like it was hard and after a distacnce was right back to plowing at 7-8 inches.  We ended up getting a number of flat field stones some around 12"-14 ", few larger, and a ton of 8" rock out of a 100'X 50' area, so I understand that was asking allot just too stony, field was never plowed if so some 50-60 years ago.  

Edited by Teddy (punchie) - 08 Jun 2011 at 5:21pm

http://www.wieseindustries.com/to-fit-allis-chalmers-plows-387-390-series_p_-1,79,219.cfm

Rawleigh wrote: http://www.wieseindustries.com/to-fit-allis-chalmers-plows-387-390-series_p_-1,79,219.cfm

Ain't none of those even close to original style. Those look like the Radex's on my Oliver. However maybe they would make it work better.