LOL,  Mike, the first thing that crossed my mind when I read that post was "does everyone in Casey Illinois build Cyclo conversions?"

I will have to agree with the need to do some finishing and rework on what they built.  We found a few welds on ours which, frankly, would not have made it out of my freshman Vo-Ag class.  

I still like the HRF toolbar design.  Both of ours did what we needed them to do while we had them, but I'm not unhappy to have put that stage of our career behind us. Last I knew NEMOScott was still talking to me, so I hope I didn't fail to provide adequate disclaimers with the 15" one he posted pictures of in the other thread.   I think I told him of all the areas we had experienced problems, and as far as I know  we had successfully addressed most of them, other then the basic underlying problems that it just weighed to darn much for the tires it had when it was muddy, that the IH engineers who built the control box apparently needed to take some remedial EE classes,  and then the fact that we had already pulled it over umptten-thousand  acres, thereby qualifying it for those "it was used too much when it was new" issues. 

If I could get a new HRF bar, and I had an application to use it for which would not result in a final weight a lot greater then original, or require pulling something behind,  I would use it.   It's still the best trailing design of a large planter bar which we have had, and I think we have had about every basic design except for the White like Bobby G just got.    The 1200 CP CIH is really nice, but it cost a lot and it has lots of electrical complexity, and a lot of tail out there when you go to turn a tight corner in transport....and there's the nagging question of whether the guy who made the control box for the HRF hydraulics had retired before AFS was designed, or not!    The 1790 Deere was humongously heavy, and had it's own weld quality issues, and hitch weight was substantial in transport.  The Freisen we have now works pretty well and is about as light as possible, but it's still very long and wide in transport. 

I need to go back and re-read this post a few times.......there's currently a danger of another winter planter project occurring in our shop.