7 Best Budget Lynch Pins For Small Hobby Farms That Old Farmers Swear By
Find reliable, low-cost lynch pins for your hobby farm. Our guide covers 7 durable, time-tested options that seasoned farmers trust for securing equipment.
You’re out in the back forty, trying to get the field mowed before the rain hits, when you feel a sudden lurch and hear a sickening metallic scrape. You look back to see your brush hog disconnected, digging a new furrow in your pasture, all because a ten-cent piece of metal failed. That tiny, often-overlooked lynch pin is the only thing holding your expensive implement to your even more expensive tractor, and choosing a good one is one of the cheapest forms of insurance you can buy.
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Why a Good Lynch Pin Matters on the Farm
A lynch pin, or linchpin, is a simple fastener used to secure a wheel or, more commonly for us, an implement to the end of an axle or pin. It’s the final piece of the puzzle that connects your three-point hitch arms to your box blade, your mower, or your tiller. Without it, the implement’s lower arm simply slides off the tractor’s lift arm pin.
The consequences of a failure aren’t just inconvenient; they’re dangerous. An implement dropping at speed can damage itself, the tractor, or the ground beneath it. Worse, if it happens on a slope or during a turn, it can create a seriously unstable situation.
On a small hobby farm, where you’re often working alone and every minute counts, you can’t afford that kind of setback. A lost or broken pin means a trip back to the barn or all the way to town, wasting precious daylight. Investing in a handful of quality pins is a foundational part of running a safe and efficient operation. It’s about preventing problems, not just fixing them.
SpeeCo Zinc-Plated: The All-Around Standard
If you walk into any farm supply store, the bin full of silvery-gray pins you see will likely be SpeeCo. This is the baseline, the industry standard that gets the job done without any fuss. It’s the pin that probably came with your last implement.
The simple zinc plating offers decent protection against rust in most environments. The steel is strong enough for 90% of the tasks on a small farm, from pulling a small manure spreader to attaching a landscape rake. The ring is a classic design that’s easy to pull with cold or gloved hands.
Think of the SpeeCo pin as the reliable old pickup truck of fasteners. It isn’t fancy, and the zinc coating will eventually wear away with enough use, exposing the steel to rust. The ring can also get bent if you snag it on a fence post. But for the price, its performance and availability make it the undisputed king of general-purpose lynch pins.
CountyLine Yellow Chromate for Wet Conditions
For those of us farming in damp climates or who store implements outside, the standard zinc pin has a weakness: rust. A rusty pin can be a nightmare to insert or remove, turning a 30-second task into a 10-minute struggle with a hammer and penetrating oil. This is where the yellow chromate coating, found on CountyLine pins at Tractor Supply, really shines.
That yellowish, iridescent coating provides a significant step up in corrosion resistance over standard zinc. The pin stays slick and functional even after a season of morning dew and pop-up rainstorms. This is especially valuable for implements you don’t use often, as they are the most likely to have their pins seize up from sitting.
The bright color is also a surprisingly practical feature. When you drop a silver pin in green grass, it vanishes. A yellow chromate pin, however, stands out like a dandelion. It’s a small detail, but it saves a lot of time spent searching on your hands and knees. It costs a little more, but it pays for itself in avoided frustration.
The Hillman Group Assortment: Best Value Pack
Sometimes, the best lynch pin is the one you have on hand. Nothing stops a project faster than realizing the pin you need is a different diameter than the one you have. The Hillman Group, a brand you’ll find in almost every hardware store, solves this by offering assortment packs.
Buying a plastic case with 10, 20, or even 50 pins in various sizes feels like an indulgence at first, but it’s one of the smartest purchases a new hobby farmer can make. You get a range of diameters and usable lengths to fit everything from a small garden cart to a heavy-duty three-point attachment.
Is every pin in the kit going to be the absolute highest quality? Probably not. But they are more than adequate for the job. The real value isn’t in the individual pin; it’s in the guarantee that you have a workable solution right there in your shop. It turns a potential crisis into a minor inconvenience, and that’s a trade worth making every time.
A&I Products Heavy-Duty for Tough Implements
Not all jobs are created equal. Pulling a light-duty rake is one thing; using a subsoiler to break up compacted ground or back-blading a hardened gravel driveway is another. These high-stress tasks put immense shearing force on your connection points, and that’s where a standard pin can bend or fail.
A&I Products is known for its aftermarket tractor parts, and their heavy-duty lynch pins are built for this kind of abuse. They are typically made from a higher grade, heat-treated steel, making them far more resistant to bending and breaking. The pin itself is often visibly thicker, and the retaining ring is more robust.
You don’t need these for every implement. But for your heaviest, hardest-working tools—the box blade, the chisel plow, the post-hole digger that always seems to find rocks—a heavy-duty pin is non-negotiable. It’s the difference between finishing the job and spending your afternoon trying to wrestle a bent pin out of your hitch.
Curt Double-Wire Pin for Maximum Security
The classic lynch pin design has one major flaw: the single loop ring can be snagged. A low-hanging branch, thick brush, or even a stray piece of fencing can catch the ring and pull the pin free. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s always at the worst possible moment.
The Curt Double-Wire pin, often marketed for trailer hitches, offers a clever solution. Instead of a single round ring, it uses a double-wire clip that lies much flatter against the pin head. This streamlined design is significantly less likely to get caught on anything as you work.
This pin is the perfect problem-solver for specific tasks. If you’re mowing overgrown field edges, dragging implements through wooded trails, or operating any equipment where snagging is a constant risk, this pin provides an extra layer of security. It gives you the confidence that your implement will stay right where you put it, no matter what you’re driving through.
Agri-Fab Lanyard Pin: Never Lose One Again
Where do all the lost lynch pins go? It’s one of the great mysteries of farm life. They’re left on the tractor tire, dropped in the dirt, or simply fall out of a pocket. The Agri-Fab Lanyard Pin solves this problem with a brilliantly simple idea: attach the pin to the implement.
These pins come connected to a short cable or vinyl cord with a loop on the end. You simply secure the loop to the implement’s frame. When you pull the pin to make an adjustment or swap equipment, it just dangles safely, ready to be reinserted. You literally can’t lose it unless you lose the entire machine.
This is an absolute game-changer for equipment that requires frequent pin removal. Think of adjusting the wheel height on a finish mower, changing the angle on a blade, or opening the tailgate on a trailer. Instead of juggling pins, you can focus on the task at hand. It’s a small convenience that adds up to a lot of saved time and sanity.
Forney Industries Pin: Top Hardware Store Find
You’re in the middle of a job on a Sunday, a pin breaks, and the farm supply store is closed. Your best bet is the local hardware store, and if you’re lucky, they’ll have Forney products on the shelf. Known for welding supplies and metalworking tools, Forney also makes exceptionally solid fasteners.
Forney lynch pins don’t have special coatings or fancy features. They are just well-made pieces of hardware. The steel is good quality, the rings are strong, and the construction is reliable. They feel substantial in your hand in a way that cheaper, generic pins sometimes don’t.
This is your go-to for quality and convenience. When you need a dependable pin and can’t get to a specialty ag store, Forney is a brand you can trust. It’s a reminder that good engineering and quality materials aren’t exclusive to big agricultural brands; sometimes the best solution is waiting in aisle seven of your local True Value.
In the end, a lynch pin is a tiny part of a very large system, but it’s a critical one. Spending a few extra dollars on the right pin for the job—whether it’s for rust prevention, heavy-duty strength, or just to keep from losing it—is a smart investment. It’s one of those small choices that prevents big problems, letting you spend more time farming and less time fixing.
