PTO live, etc.

As Bob mentioned, you really should get an over-running clutch for use on your PTO shaft. In fact, if I were you, I wouldn't go back to the field without one. I have a Ford 2000 tractor that I use to bush hog steep hills here in Middle Tennessee, and it scared me to death the first time I tried to bush hog a hill without an over-running clutch installed. I previously farmed on table-top flat land in Minnesota.

I also bush hogged some real high weeds in an area on the back side of my farm last year. It's an area that I had never worked before (I just got this farm about 5 years ago). Everything was going fine until I dropped my right wheel into a sink hole that was about five feet deep that I didn't know was there due to the high weeds. The tractor would have rolled on me if it hadn't hung the bush hog on the side of the hole. I, like you, had to shake out my pants leg when I finally got nerve enough to slip very gingerly out of the seat and jump off the high-side of the tractor. My neighbor came over and pulled me out with his big four wheel drive Ford, but it was frightening even to hook the chains onto my tractor to pull it out based on how close it was to rolling over.

Good luck in the future, and if I were you, I sure would go immediately to TSC or a tracor dealer and get an over-running clutch before I bush hogged again.

Tom in TN

As to why the tractor kept going-sounds to me more like a transmission clutch is sticking. In all the 25+ years I have mowed I have yet to see a bush hog mower blade push a tractor up a tree or push it any where for that matter. I have seen trans clutches stick and create some tense situations.

Live pto can use the foot clutch, but the foot clutch pedal operates 2 seperate clutches - aka 2-stage clutch. You push 1/2 way down with your foot & this operates the tractor tranny clutch. You push all the way down & this also operates the pto clutch. Note that the tranny clutch is always affected first, but the tranny & pto use 2 seperate clutches.

Live means you are able, somehow, to disconnect the tranny clutch without affecting the pto.

Independent means the 2 clutches are totally independent of each other, generally a foot pedal for the tranny & a bigger lever to operate the pto clutch or to operate the hydraulics that control the pto clutch.

I think there is a subtle but important difference in your discription of live pto & how it actually operates, but I migh just be thick-headed today. :)

A brush hog type mower can store 20-50 hp in the flywheel effect of it's rotation, and on a transmission pto (non-live) the pto shaft & the tranny gears are locked together at all times, so the flywheel effect of the brush hog will move the tractor for quite a while even after you push in the clutch.

Let's say you are in low gear at full throttle with a brush hog on a non-live pto tractor. You push in the clutch, and the tractor engine stops providing power to both the rear wheels and the brush hog. BUT, the brush hog has that big flywheel effect, providing perhaps 30 hp as it takes a minute or so to spin down. Since the tractor is not live pto, the whole greartrain in the rear end is still locked together - that are always locked together with a single clutch. So the brush hog is supplying 30 hp to the tranny, & since you are in 1st gear, that 30 hp is being applied to your rear wheels. This is going to make your tractor move for a ways yet! A heavy flywheel-type of pto load will always take time to spin down, and on a non-live pto tractor it will alway be driving the tranny in whatever gear you are in - seemingly no effect if you happen to be in neutral, or driving the rear wheels if you are in any tranny gear.

You must never have used a brush hog with a non-live pto tractor in 25 years..... :) Without an ORC, it can be quite a ride, as this gentleman found out! :)

--->Paul

As I understand it, in a transmission PTO scheme the PTO shaft is hooked directly into the transmission, and (assuming the PTO mechanism is engaged) will turn any time the transmission is turning. Where it gets nasty is that the reverse is also true - the transmission will continue turning (and thus the tractor will keep moving) any time that the PTO shaft is turning. So if you have a PTO-powered implement behind your tractor such as a brush hog and you've got your implement powered up, with your PTO spinning, you will find that when you push down on your clutch pedal to disengage the transmission from the engine and then press on the brakes to stop the tractor, the *tractor will NOT stop* until the implement behind you stops spinning.