Great things, front linkages. Except that they don’t really do much except go up and down.

Plus they’re not always the easiest things to pick up an implement with.

But Finnish tractor maker Valtra has come up with a much more versatile 3.5t steerable front linkage that could make life a lot easier.

Its LHlink linkage is attached to the tractor frame by a vertical pivot with the arms moved from side to side by a hydraulic ram.

That much is simple, but it’s the options that are intriguing:

You can, for instance:

* Operate the front linkage arms so they move as a pair or independently of each other. The latter is useful if you need to hitch up to an implement on uneven ground. 

* Set the arms to move sideways automatically as the front wheels turn. The ratio between the swing of the arms and the steering angle of the wheels is adjustable. So you can have a big arm swing for a relatively small steering angle change or vice versa

* This is particularly useful with front and rear mower combinations (see picture above). Usually, a twisting headland will mean that some strips of grass get missed by both the front and rear mowers.

* With this linkage, the front mower moves across in the direction of the turn, catching those previously-missed strips.

* You can also move the front linkage to ‘push’ the implement over to one side so you can get under a tree along a headland or cope with a wavy field edge.

Yiou can see the LHlink steerable front linakge at next wek’s Agritechnica show in Hanover, Germany.