Stupid Cutter Tricks

Dumb
A few more times and I'll have compiled enough mistakes to write a tractor song
Dum, dum, dum, DOH !

Maybe more like careless that may turn into the unpleasant consequences of dumb.

[b:3ab55d4d01]Here's what i did:[/b:3ab55d4d01]

Had my landscape rake on turned 180 backwards for something else, and had to move the MF cutter to level ground, so decided to just chain it up to the Land Pride outrigger.
The move all went well except that at one point the fingers of the rake pushed on the tied up shaft endwise, bottoming out the telescopic square tubes . . . Soooo idiot I, winds up applying serious longitudinal pressure to the input shaft of the gearbox.

What it did was to cause a puddle of gear lube the size of a big cookie to ooze out of the capped breather hole on top to lay there stinkin' up the deck. I hate the smell of gear lube.

Makes me think that I might have damaged something , or wonder if can mean there is excessive gear play/end play within the box.

Anyway . . .
I relieved that shaft from the rake fingers pressure immediately, before I moved the cutter. I can still turn the shaft and blades by hand.

I think what might have happened was that the cutter tail wheel was sideways (I should have kicked it straight) on a slight downhill slope and when it finally swiveled straight out in the soft ground, it sent the deck towards the rake fingers. At least the finders supplied a little shock absorption!

Axo Dentley

deffinately check input shaft play. if it has some.. the seal will fail, and the bearing is likely damaged or the cover carrier is damaged, or a split ring may have popped out.

(quoted from post at 07:50:15 04/16/15) deffinately check input shaft play. if it has some.. the seal will fail, and the bearing is likely damaged or the cover carrier is damaged, or a split ring may have popped out.

Click to expand...

Thanks much!
Will do.

T

Man...I'm sorry to hear that. It's about time you started having some good luck with your stuff. You've certainly had your share of the other kind.

Cary,

Thanks for stopping by.
I cleaned off all the matted gearlube off the gearbox and wiped up the small puddle. All the oily matted blanket of leakage covering it was there when I got it THAT may have been pushed out the top breather as well so maybe it isn't an uncommon event. But probably seal leakage too.

Is the capped breather on top to allow for expansion and as a relief of lube pressure as happened here?

I didn't drive the shaft inward as in an impact, it's more like I just put excessive pressure on it.

Meanwhile, the landscape rake works real well, pulling all the dead blackberry canes from the periphery of the briar patches. It has been a burn pile day today.

I'll just look at it as motivation to do what Hobo suggested and SoundN advised. I'd feel better going over everything before using it anyway. It is no doubt overdue.

As to other misfortunes tractor-wise, all those blisters that my sheet metal broke out in, have all shrunk down in the drier weather to being hardly noticable -- so I'm not wringing my hands over that one anymore.

I may post a pic of the sheet metal now.

Terry

Paint Blisters after high humidity mishap:


Shrunken Blisters now in drier weather and after never zipping up the tractor tent again:

Just hooked up the Cutter successfully.
I'll put the sway chains on when I find them but for now as I had to jockey the rig around, I made my sway bars work. the only change that was absolutely necessary, was to come up with some skinnier pins and thanks to the stuff that came with, there they were. I couldn't even pound a regular pin through even after a tapered punch.