I did a lot of plowing as I was growing up and quickly learned if a tractor wheel is going to start spinning while you’re plowing, it’s always going to be the land (left) wheel that spins first. Since I use my Model 126 Cub Cadet as my plow tractor, I wanted a way to brake the land wheel by itself. My Model 126 has disk brakes on each wheel that are activated together by the clutch/brake pedal.
I had a brake pedal from an old piece of farm equipment that I felt I could use for the extra pedal. To get the brake motion from the right side of the Cub Cadet to the left side, I replaced the lift handle shaft bracket (No. 10 in the picture below) with a piece of 3/8″ by 3″ by 6″ piece of steel.
I drilled two 3/8″ holes in top that matched the original mounting holes. I drilled a 3/4″ hole for the lift handle. (These holes were easy to locate by laying the original bracket on the new piece.) I then drilled a 1″ diameter hole near the bottom of the bracket for my added brake. I didn’t take a picture before mounting, but you can see the new bracket in the pictures below. In the left picture, notice the 3/4″ shaft for the original lift above the 1″ shaft I added.
I made a collar to slide over the 1″ diameter shaft on the right side, welded a piece of flat to it and bolted on my clutch pedal. The clutch pedal had provision for attaching a spring.
That completed the right side.
The left side was a lot more complicated. It took a lot more time, thinking and adjusting to get it to work properly. I still wanted to have both brakes activate when I pushed the clutch/brake pedal, but wanted to be able to activate the right brake only with the added brake pedal. Pictures probably explain it better than I can in words.
I wish I could tell you I got everything to work on the first attempt, but that just wasn’t the case. I did make the bracket that mounts on the end of the 1″ brake shaft on my first go around. But it took a while to keep everything from binding. I ended up drilling an oversize hole in the little bracket that runs from my added brake to the original brake rod. I had to to that to stop the binding.
The first time I tried it out, it worked great. It really helps when plowing to be able to brake the land wheel.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, you can contact me through this website.
