Lots of hard work for nothing

I spent the better part of last week converting a 60" John Deere belly mower to a 3-point finish mower. The mower came off a 30 horsepower John Deere and I picked it up at a sale for $100.00. I thought all I had to do was weld on a 3-point assembly, fix the pto shaft to plug on to the pto of my old tractor and I would go to mowing. Not true. I finished it today and guess what? Will not mow a lick. Part of the problem is that it is not turning fast enough. I looked through the junk that came with it and part of the mounting equipment was some various pulleys. I figure without the pulleys, it turns too slow. I may have figured a way to fix this by putting the pulleys back on somehow and using a belt drive to turn up the speed but here is something I cannot figure out. The blades are turning the wrong way. The front pto on the john deere the mower came on had to have the pto turning in the opposite direction than on my tractor with a rear pto. Is that possible? I could fix this if I could reverse the gear box. There are bolt holes in the gearbox where you can mount it opposite to what it is now. I know nothing about gear boxes. can you invert it and reverse the direction? What are those extra bolt holes for. These questions may seem stupid but I need some help here. I have too much work in this thing to quit now. What a dissapointment. HELP .....

What is the possibility of finding some replacement blades that WILL cut while turning in the direction that it spins?

Not being familiar with your unit, all I can say is most belly mounts drive off of a pulley on the PTO, and the drive pulley on the PTO is usually 2 to 3 times the diameter of the driven pulley on the deck.

Apparently on your setup, blade speed was established by the size of the drive and driven pulleys and not the gear ratio in the gearbox.

To make your setup work as a 3 point, you would still need to have a driven pulley on the gearbox with the PTO shaft turning a drive pulley several times the diameter of the pulley on the gearbox.

Hope this helps. Or does it even make sense? I can visualize it better than I can explain it.

I suppose you've discovered by now that modern mid-mounted pto's run at 2000 rpm and you've calculated the sizes needed to make it work with a 540 rpm standard rear pto. It would be nice if you could make a swap at a tractor junkyard for the proper gearbox from a rear-mount JD mower. Otherwise, the only thing I know of to find out if the direction can be reversed is take the box apart and see if the shaft is machined in a way that the drive gear can be moved to the other side of the driven gear. I'm guessing that the input/output ratio is not 1 to 1. Please ask here first before starting your next project. All the best!

Maybe it would be possible to get a set of blades that are sharpened to cut in the direction the mower is turning. You could turn the blades by hand and look at the input shaft of the gearbox and see which way it has to turn to make the blades go in the right direction, but I doubt you could reverse the worm and change the direction of rotation..........rw

If it had rear-discharge, the baffles underneath might allow that. Most of these have right-side discharge so reversing the direction would not clear the grass out; instant, major clog, IMHO.

Typically the blades are held on with a bolt that goes in counter to the rotation of the blades. It could be a lethal disaster to reverse the direction of rotation without condisering this.....

--->Paul

On a pto grain auger you can move pto shaft to the other side but then the auger is spinning the wrong way so you have to turn the gear box upside down to get it to turn right direction. They are made to do that by having a similar set of holes on top of gear box. It kind of boggles the mind to figure out why that works, but it does. If you have to put different size pulleys on to speed it up can you then run a twist in the belt to change direction? Just a thought.

Point the gear box to the back, instead of the front.
Use a pulley on that input that is modest in size (maybe 7" if it will fit between the deck snd shaft and allow the belt to be put on)
Drive that with a pulley that allows the box to spin at the correct speed. (look up the speed of the PTO on the tractor it came off of)
This turning of the gear box from front to rear will change the rotation, and not the dynamics of the drive. JimN

I guess I was thinking of my Woods belly mower, which could easily dis-charge in either direction.

This sounds like a good remedy, but you need a smaller pulley on the gearbox and a large one on the pto to speed it up- maybe 3 times as large. The hardest part is building a bearing holder for the pto shaft/ pulley.

May as well cut your loses and chalk it up to the price of an education !

Like the others said you don't want to start messing around with LH blades as then the RH. bolts will loosen and you may kill someone !

Plenty of 3pt. mowers out there used and reasonable priced. You can likely recoup some of your losses by selling the gear box and spindles and misc. parts on ebay.

that WOODS belly mower also came with right hand or left hand spindles depending on what tractor it was to be used on.
Ron

ok the mid mount pto runs at engine speed and rotation.
the rear pto runs through a gear set which reduces the speed to 540 and changes the rotation
Look at a older rear WOODS mower and you will see the difference in pully size on the mower.
So you need to speed the pto speed back up and change rotation back.
"might" get by with crossing the belt and using bigger pulleys on the drive (18inch "as a guess")
possible but still a lot of work to go yet
ron

you have to find the speed of mid PTO on tractor the mower was used on , it should be about 2000 RPM . if it is you will have to use a 3.60 to 1 to drive the shaft to get the right speed . all you have to do is take the Mid PTO speed and Divide by the rear PTO speed . I have one I converted & I used a 42 tooth sprocket to drive a 12 tooth . using a 50 chain and workes fine . It isn't at this location right now or I would take picture and send to you .