Posted by Crazy Red Power in SE-WI on August 28, 2010 at 21:25:46 from (24.183.132.223):
when the durned dealership closes at 12:00 & your mower's drive belt stretched 3" - 4" at 12:15!! Drove around for 2 hours trying to find a belt. Tried NAPA, nope. Tru-Value, not even close. I woulda broken down & gone to Mama Deere, if she had a store open. Nope. Sheesh. I came back home & thought & thought & thought. Well, if I had starving livestock, I'd have to do something. I tried different size idler pulleys & the only one big enough had a bad bearing. Ah, if I loosen the idler arm & slide it over, I can take up all sorts of slack. Something didin't feel right about this idea, though. I had a good inch of deflection on the belt & it worked. That's all I needed to know at the time. It worked beautiful! Got the field cut clean & couldn't be happier! I headed for the shop to clean off the hay rig & relax. Got everything blown off nice & clean. The H & mower will be sitting out overnight. So, I sprayed the cutter bar down with WD40. Got on the tractor to start it & run the PTO to work the WD40 into the knife & under the clips. Ran it for a few minutes when I noticed a dry spot , on the cutter bar by the inner shoe. I bent over to pick up the spray can off of the platform when I heard an awful crash & much banging. Before I could depress the kill switch all the way, it stopped. I hesitantly turned to find no PTO shaft to the mower. Darned shaft came off from both ends! The push button on the tractor side was cracked & everything, including the PTO extension, was off the mower & tractor. Both halves of the shaft seperated, as well.
The account my girlfriend gives is, the PTO shaft on the mower end worked it's was toward the tractor, first. Propellered almost 360 dgs. before coming to a rest in the dirt & seperated form the front half of the shaft. The front half of the shaft came off after banging against the mounting plate a few times & came to a rest on the drawbar.
After a few minutes (& an inspection of the shorts) I thought back on the scenario & came to this conclusion:
The break-a-way on the mower may have caused the belt to run over the wobble box pulley, thus stretching it. What caused it to trip is still a mystery. There simply is nothing there. No rock, no depression, no bump, nuthin' & the hay was a bit more sparse in that area. Must have been that gremlin again.
Moving the idler closer to the drive pulley caused undue stress, friction & heating in the drive shaft housing. The grease heated up & thinned out. It passed the front seal & oozed out onto the shaft the PTO adapter is connected to. It got into the hole with the spirol pin & the pin worked free. The adapter finally got the lubrication it needed & left the shaft (I've been trying to get it off since last spring!). The rest is noisy history.
Thank God no one was hurt & I'm glad I leaned over to grab the WD40. Had I already turned to spray the cutter bar from the tractor seat, well, I might not be typing with this hand or the other one for that matter. Shoot, that shaft could have cleaned my clock permanently. Set all the bats free, too!
Thw two things I learned today are:
1.) DON'T even think of leaving the seat with the PTO running (I coulda lost my life, much less mangle the "cookies" while dismounting the tractor!).
2.) There's no sense in hurrying to your grave. If you've had a few near misse in your lifetime, that dosen't give you any "senority". You only get closer to that fatal blow.
Yep, that's been my Saturday. Heaven forbid I should be bored with nothing to do. Hopefully someone had a BBQ, a few beers 'r pop & enjoyed the day. It was too nice around here not to. So nice, I couldn't talk myself out of makin' hay. With a 84 dg. daytime temp, 32% humidity, 48 dg. dewpoint, a 10 - 15 mph. wind out of the south & a 3 day drying period ahead with temps at about 90 who wouldn't? ME! I shoulda gone with the brats & pop. Maybe an afternoon nap. Jeez!
Mike
P.S. The "new" hay conditioner I dragged home 180 mi. worked flawlessly. A little elbow grease & touch-up paint will do wonders. The camera does no justice to the red on that machines.
P.P.S. The yellow spots in the pictures are sulfer butterflies.
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