USED MACHINERY: Knight Farm Machinery trailed sprayers: When Brian Knight built his first 2,000-litre, 12m boom trailed sprayer back in 1984, he fitted it with a mechanical tracking drawbar. Twenty years on, there has been a whole raft of further drawbar and other developments. If looking for a machine from the interim, the key to ‘used’ success is finding a model of the optimum spec, as James de Havilland reports
The Knight trailed sprayer story follows a similar theme to that of many pieces of farm kit. It has got bigger – and, of course, much more sophisticated over time.
Heading back to the ‘trailed’ start, original Knight chassis and drawbar dimensions limited the Lincs-built machine to a boom width maximum of 18-20m and a tank capacity of 2,000 litres. These restrictions were due to overall sprayer stability, with its then design of mechanical-track drawbar and lack of space between folded boom and tractor cab.
To counter the first machines’ sub-24m boom width maximum, Knight developed a second trailed line-up to complement the original ‘short chassis’ models in ‘86. These were altogether different to the first machines: The sprayers’ chassis were 100cm longer, thus allowing initially 2,500-and later 3,000-litre spray tanks to be installed, and the drawbar was changed from mechanical tracking to being towed from either tractor pick-up hitch or drawbar. More on this later. As a detail aside, these models were also the first trailed units to offer hydraulic-fold 12/24m booms from the outset.
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