Question 70 series roll-over plow

I may go look at what I think is a 70 series 3-bottom, 2-way plow. The fellow says it has some welds, but is in pretty good shape. It does not have the tail wheel.

I don't know if the tail wheel is truly missing or not. I just looked up the plow in Swinford's book and it showed a tail wheel, so I assumed this plow was missing it.

Reed I looked at the pic in the book and it looks like you are talking about the gauge wheel, not a tail wheel.  I have a NOS arm w/spindle for that plow out in the barn somewhere....there was probably a reason the dealer stocked that item....

In my plow frames book there is a bare 70 series two way 3 bottom frame. It doesn't have the adjustable width feature of single way plows but it has the fixed shanks of the 60 and 70 single way plows. On other pages I see two forms of from gauge wheel with iron wheels and one rear gauge wheel with a rubber tire.

A couple pages over there's an 80 two way frame with spring trip shanks.

Then there are several variations with different time periods of use on the shaft yoke and beaming screw with 3 point and SC hitches separately that appear to be shared between the 70 and 80 two way plows.

While the 70 and 80 two way plow frames are shown separated with fixed shanks on the 70 and spring trip shanks on the 80, I just checked a detail I'd never looked at before. The BASIC frame bars are the same. Have the SAME part numbers for the same width. So shanks will interchange one from the other for sure.

Then there is an actuator, like a rotary motor with some hydraulic provisions.

I'm probably failing to see all the options.

We wish they sold 6 different distinct plow models all factory assembled with consistent parts. I know they didn't supply specific plow bottoms based on plow frames and the more I dig in the plow frames parts book the more it appears that AC had a warehouse of plow parts and had 17 options for any configuration (width, and number of bottoms) including straight or trip shanks, adjustable frame width, gauge wheels or not. And that bottoms and coulters and their accessories were selected separately from the frames. So its not quite possible to say that a model 73 plow would have  or would not have gauge wheels, whether the hitch would be three point, trailing on its own wheels or snap coupler. Fact appears to be that the nomenclature model 73 only specifies it probably had a basic frame and that by options it could have various features, or not, depending on the INDIVIDUAL order. While the 70 family ordinarily did't have spring trip shanks I think the spring trip shanks could be bolted on the 70 frame in place of the straight shanks and the spring rip shanks are shown as part of the model 80 frames and as individual assemblies.

The only reliable way to identify bottoms is by finding a part number on frog, moldboard, shin, or share. Landsides were swapped and mostly the same parts used on all bottoms though there was a considerable set of options for landsides, primarily in length and bracing. Shares sometimes were used on several different bottoms, and of course were different for left and right hand. Some bottoms came in 3 widths left hand and right hand and then the shares came in three or four different materials and at least as many shapes for different plowing conditions and soils. Shape variations included length of shares (they came in wide and narrow, sometimes economy), and curve of the nose. Some were deep suck, which probably meant an extended point on the noise that's turned down, some were regular suck. Some were chilled iron, some where two or three layers of steel, some were plain steel. All to give different wear characteristics. Probably the chilled iron wore the best, were hardest to abrade, but not a good selection for hitting rocks. And where the steel wasn't broken by hitting rocks it wore out faster in sandy soils.

Sometimes a plow bottom and plow frame can be identified by comparing pictures (plow bottoms in the plow bottom book are shown with the right hand plow laying on its landside and the illustration is from the bottom showing hardware, bracing, and frog details.) to the parts books.

Gerald J.

Eldon,

Your last post just made my day :>)

Bob@allisdowneast