Another thing I really like is a quick hitch. It makes hooking and unhooking a breeze. I find that if attachments are easier to hook and unhook, I am more likely to use them when I may only have a small need, rather than just not using them because I don't want to go to the trouble of hooking them up.
Quick hitches are a pain in the rear on Catagory 1 (small) 3pt hitches. If you get up in the big tractors with cat 2, cat 3n and cat 3 the stuff has been standardized for a long time. But because few people use them on catagory 1 (small) implements, lots of manufacturers did not keep their implements to ASAE hitch standards. So if you have five implements, but two of them will not work with the quick hitch, it is almost not worth having it because then you have to remove the quick hitch to use the non-compliant implements. That was a problem when I used this QH on my JD2520 that I traded in for the JD3038 I have now.
So I made it a point to make everything be able to use the quick hitch when I traded tractors. This involved some welding and cutting moving pins and lengthening the pto shaft on my rotary tiller. On the 5' rotary mower it involved buying a flexible linkage to allow the mower tail wheel to float (without a quick hitch it would have floated at the top link connection).
Now I have everything that hooks up to this tractor will work with the quick hitch. Some will still not work with the upper hook, and in the picture you can see I use a pinned linkage at the top instead of the hook. I do not find this to be a big problem because this pin is easily installed by using the 3pt hydraulics to raise or lower the lower links a little to align the pin.
Not suggesting everyone would appreciate of needs one of these. But having used them on larger tractors for years, I like a quick hitch. They do have some down sides. The implement compatibility is one obvious one. The other thing is they do extend the implement about 3" further to the rear. On my 2520 that was a good thing because it had very short lower links. On this 3038 tractor it has long links to begin with so it puts the implement further back than it would need to be. This affects control and turning with heavy implements.
But all in all, I like it. Mine is a cheapie after market one.
Come on over......I have a quick hitch and some implements that need some work. Would love to use the quick hitch but.......
