Flail Mower Bearing Help

Hello,

I have a Mott / Alamo 72 flail mower ( I believe ).

I think it is the old style cutter bar as the bearing housing has 3 bolts.

I have a vibration issue, and after looking have found that the bearing on the pulley side is bad and or the housing is bad.

You can see where something has cracked and is allowing the cutter bar to move around.

Can someone tell me how to fix this?

Some of the questions I have are:

How do I remove the cutter bar?
How do I remove the bearings?
Are they pressed on?
Would you also go ahead and replace the non pulley side?
Would you replace the housing?
How do I tell the difference between old and new style when ordering the parts?
How heavy is the cutter bar (do I need help with it) ?

Also, I have a new belt on it. after a few hours of use you can see wear on the back of the belt. The idler pulley has some pitted spots on it. Is this causing the wear on the belt?

Thanks for any help!
upnorthwi

I'm going to ask a really stupid question.....

What is a 'cutter bar' on a flail mower?

Sickle mowers and disc mowers have a cutter bar, but I'm not familiar with a spinning flail mower having such a thing?


To get good answers, you probably would need to post some pictures. I would just dig into the project, but have been doing bearings for years. It is hard to explain it step by step without seeing what one is dealing with......

Here the napa store used to be great at getting you bearings, he would look at and bring you a common bearing, didnt need to measure. Unfortunately the good folk aren't there any more, but a different auto/ machine store in town has good folk, bring them the old bearing, most have a part number stamped in tiny on the side, if not they can measure and match up.there are maybe 3 big brands of bearing in the world, they will find it if they know what they are doing.

I tend to reuse the old bearing holder if they are not worn, but certainly would if it got worn at all
The other end - well up to you I guess, I would replace any bearings I had to mess with, if more are on your end of the shaft, u tend not to go after stuff that was t disturbed and tackle them when they go out. Likely the pulley side is getting much more wear than the other end. But, it is up to you, some folks have a 'replace everything and then its all good' mentality and that's not a bad policy either.

Paul

The cutter bar is the bar that goes across the mower and has welded lugs that hold the blades. It has 4 rows of "stations" that hold 2 blades. In my case 184 blades as mine is a "fine" cut. A bush hog just has the 1 blade. With a flail mower, all the knives or blades rotate on the bar and mulch all the grass and brush where a bush hog just cuts it off and tosses it out the back, leaving clumps. The flail has a ground roller that rolls on the ground giving you an even cut with no scalping. On the cutter bar, the knives are hanging loose. If they hit a rock or something they just fold back until clear of the object. There is a world of difference between a flail mower and a bush hog, and I love my flail.

If the image link works you can see a cutter bar and a ground roller, otherwise you can Google flail cutter bar.

I'm looking at a rotor and a roller. Given common definitions, your photo does not include a 'cutter bar'.

I apologize.

They are called cuttershafts, not cutter bars....or rotors.

See #7 and # 18 on the diagram

#7 105720 COARSE CUT CUTTERSHAFT 105720

#18 CUTTER SHAFT 74F FINE CUT CUTTERSHAFT 105724
Untitled URL Link

On your vibration issue, if you are missing any flails it will put it out of balance and if not fixed in time will take out the bearings!

Thanks. I was missing 4, replaced them, but it was already too late for the bearing.

Yes, shaft I can understand.

I didn't mean to get hung up on details, but sometimes people say one thing, and mean another..... Wanted to be sure we really were talking about a flail mower, when you mentioned cutter -bar-.

And, a brush hog type of mower technically has 2 blades, not one. A finsh type of mower maybe would have one blade, tho then they tend to have more spindles with a blade each......

Flails are nice for many things, very common for shredding cornstalks around here. They do take more hp than about any other cutter tho. My 6 row flail takes 140hp to do good work.

Paul

Not answering your question,but I cut this with a flail mower yesterday. That's a Farmall 756 with an 8' Tiger mower. It was thick and over the hood. Was doing good until I ran over a Yellow jacket hole.

Bet an 8 Footer will "Pull it's Ears Back"..!!!

I find that the Flail will usually be somewhat "out-of-balance", from the grass/weeds that get packed in the Link above the Flail knives..as they will sling out and off it changes the Balance..

Try cleaning all of those links above the Flails, check for missing Flails and then see if it seems out-of balance..

My 6 1/2 Footer is about all my JD 720 D wants in really Big stuff..!!!

Ron..

Yes. In the right conditions the 756 knows it's got a hold to something.