Wrestling a forty year old brushhog!

[RSKY]

I tore the slip clutch plates out of our forty year old Ford 910 brush mower about a month ago. Had to order the parts and while waiting for them I somehow came down with 'walking pneumonia'! So even though I had the parts the 'ENFORCER' (sorry about all the quotation marks but.....) threatened body parts every time I mentioned leaving to house to work on anything. Something about not wanting me sick enough that she had to wait on me hand and foot. Medical office told me to stay in and away from everybody and everything for eight to ten days and she doubled that.

Today I attempted to repair the clutch. Simple job, I've done it at least a half dozen times before. Twice in one day as a matter of fact. Usually in the middle of a field on a hot day. So I had a pretty good idea how to fix it even though it has been fifteen to twenty years since I've done the job.

I couldn't get it apart. Had to get a hub off a splined shaft to install the new clutch plates. I beat on it with a hand sledge. Used a six foot long pry bar. Used an eight pound sledge hammer. Looked at a parts diagram and beat on it some more. FOUR HOURS I worked on the stupid thing. All this time with my 94-year old mother looking over my shoulder and telling me what I was doing wrong. I am sixty five years old and my mother was chewing me out for cussing the mower.

Finally about 12:30 this afternoon she told me to, "spray the whole **** thing with that stuff in the blue can (WD-40) and let's go eat Chinese".

Her solution to most problems starts with a visit to a Chinese buffet. Took me about thirty minutes to get most of the grease and dirt off and we hop in her new car (she wrecked the old one in May, dealer said she was the oldest person he had ever sold a new car to) and she drove to the buffet. She didn't even get a plate, said all my bad language had spoiled her appetite. THAT made my mood better.

Came back home and beat on the stupid thing again. Still no luck. Then I gently tapped the hub in the wrong direction just to see if it would move in any direction and it did. And when I tapped it in the right direction it slid off into my hand. Twenty minutes later the new clutch plates were in, the hub was on the spline shaft to the gearbox, and I had the four and a half foot long pipe wrench tightening the stupid thing up.

What a day. A thirty to forty five minute job took more than six hours, counting the lunch break.

So the moral to the story is if you have a mechanical problem that is hard to fix just spray it with something and go eat Chinese. When you come back try to put on what you are actually trying to take off and all your problems will be solved.

The joys of using forty+ year old equipment.

RSKY

 

[oosik]

Yes - but I don't have a 94 year old mother to give me advice. It's OK RSKY - you can admit that you finally took her advice and it came apart easily.:laughing: :dance1:

 

[rangerfredbob]

That's more work than the potato picker work my brother and I did yesterday... he has an old Oliver single row digger, someone at some point put a transmission in the input but backward to speed up the belt for whatever reason, He grows older versions of stuff (you know, things that taste good...) so they're more fragile so we flipped the transmission yesterday. Went pretty smooth, whoever did the job before did pretty good on the transmission mount as the whole assembly mostly just flipped around, we had to cut one shaft, get some black iron pipe to make a sleeve for shear bolts and drill a few holes in the shaft for shear bolts and pins. On the transmission was a shift knob that said "Ford Rotunda" which is apparently from a 1934 Ford, 3 speed manual. We even tried to be nice to the transmission and add some oil, once the level got to the 1/2" by 2" hole in the side of the case it ran out of course (that's how we found out there was a hole, didn't see it before) so we drained most of it out... that's a project for another day. I imagine having the PTO input out of a Farmall 130 that is at idle is around 150rpm then the trans in second gear so maybe 2:1, I'm sure the trans has an easy life...

 

[MechanicalGuy]

That's more work than the potato picker work my brother and I did yesterday... he has an old Oliver single row digger, someone at some point put a transmission in the input but backward to speed up the belt for whatever reason, He grows older versions of stuff (you know, things that taste good...) so they're more fragile so we flipped the transmission yesterday. Went pretty smooth, whoever did the job before did pretty good on the transmission mount as the whole assembly mostly just flipped around, we had to cut one shaft, get some black iron pipe to make a sleeve for shear bolts and drill a few holes in the shaft for shear bolts and pins. On the transmission was a shift knob that said "Ford Rotunda" which is apparently from a 1934 Ford, 3 speed manual. We even tried to be nice to the transmission and add some oil, once the level got to the 1/2" by 2" hole in the side of the case it ran out of course (that's how we found out there was a hole, didn't see it before) so we drained most of it out... that's a project for another day. I imagine having the PTO input out of a Farmall 130 that is at idle is around 150rpm then the trans in second gear so maybe 2:1, I'm sure the trans has an easy life...

It's usually the opposite from my experience. It's most often that I end up following up near shear incompetence and have to completely re-do everything. You got lucky.

 

[DJ54]

That's why I keep my trusty can of Never-Seize at hand, when reassembling just about anything. That, and by trusty bottle of penetrate made of a 50/50/ mix of acetone, and ATF I got the recipe for, from Soundguy on this forum. Beats anything I've bought off the shelf, bar none.

 

[Zebrafive]

RSKY, I have a Woods rotary cutter that I can't get the slip clutch off. It moves a little in each direction. Bring your hammers, wd40 and Mother. I buy the Chinese!

 

[oosik]

Must have been a weak moment. To leave yourself so open...........

 

[shooterdon]

Regrettably, if we had listened to our moms more often we would likely have had better outcomes on many issues....LOL.

 

[pmsmechanic]

I've noticed that on some splines, especially older ones is that they start to wear. If there is a grove in the splines for a bolt to hold the parts together the spines wear evenly all along except in the grove. When you try to remove the parts the unworn part of the spline is stuck in the grove. So you need to rotate the hub in the opposite direction of normal rotation to get the unworn part of the spline out of the grove. Then it's easy to remove as RSKY discovered.

 

[Atchuuu]

Great story. Made me laugh. Thanks for posting.

 

[Jstpssng]

And the moral of the story is... Don't argue with your mother!!!

 

[stuckmotor]

I'm happy to see that you're back on your feet.

 

[fried1765]

That's why I keep my trusty can of Never-Seize at hand, when reassembling just about anything. That, and by trusty bottle of penetrate made of a 50/50/ mix of acetone, and ATF I got the recipe for, from Soundguy on this forum. Beats anything I've bought off the shelf, bar none.

What you have made is poor man's.... "Kroil"
It does work!

 

[Molalla1]

Yes - but I don't have a 94 year old mother to give me advice. It's OK RSKY - you can admit that you finally took her advice and it came apart easily.:laughing: :dance1:

Yep, moral of the story is to listen to one's 94 year old mother . . .

 

[DJ54]

What you have made is poor man's.... "Kroil"
It does work!

Works better than Kroil. I've got some of that..!!

 

[shovelmike]

That's a great story, RSKY, I read it to my wife this morning and we both got a lot of enjoyment out of it.
It sounds like your mother is quite spry for 94 years of age, my mother passed away just two weeks short of her 94th birthday, but dementia really took its toll on her the las ten years.
I have the same mower as you, a tough old thing on which some previous owner added a lot more angle iron to really make it indestructible.

 

[RSKY]

That's a great story, RSKY, I read it to my wife this morning and we both got a lot of enjoyment out of it.
It sounds like your mother is quite spry for 94 years of age, my mother passed away just two weeks short of her 94th birthday, but dementia really took its toll on her the las ten years.
I have the same mower as you, a tough old thing on which some previous owner added a lot more angle iron to really make it indestructible.

Ours has been welded, bolted, chained, and yes tied together with hay bale string. One of the top tubes is braced with angle iron. But it is still going. The gearbox was leaking but every year I put three or four shots of grease in it and it hasn't leaked in several years. Mom kept me busy for years just putting it back together or doing things like flipping it over to cut barbed wire off the blades. But she quit mowing after she turned ninety.

RSKY

 

[shovelmike]

Ours has been welded, bolted, chained, and yes tied together with hay bale string. One of the top tubes is braced with angle iron. But it is still going. The gearbox was leaking but every year I put three or four shots of grease in it and it hasn't leaked in several years. Mom kept me busy for years just putting it back together or doing things like flipping it over to cut barbed wire off the blades. But she quit mowing after she turned ninety.

RSKY

She sounds like an extraordinary woman. I admit to winding barbed wire around the blades once myself. Mine is a rough, wooded piece of ground, a few old broken down barbed wire fences hid down in the brush. It's kind of surprising when you are mowing, and suddenly see weathered old fence posts scuttling along through the weeds...and headed your way. Yes indeed, you disconnect, get the boom, flip the thing over, and spend quite a while with snips getting all that wire out of there.

 

[RSKY]

She sounds like an extraordinary woman. I admit to winding barbed wire around the blades once myself. Mine is a rough, wooded piece of ground, a few old broken down barbed wire fences hid down in the brush. It's kind of surprising when you are mowing, and suddenly see weathered old fence posts scuttling along through the weeds...and headed your way. Yes indeed, you disconnect, get the boom, flip the thing over, and spend quite a while with snips getting all that wire out of there.

I once caught an extremely large piece of very thick plastic on the blades. I guess it was thirty or forty feet square and was folded up next to our tobacco barn. This was on the farm in the Clarks River Bottom which is a mile or two from nowhere. It was about noon, I was working midnights and had got off shift at eight in the morning and had to go back in about 11:00 that night. All I had was a pocket knife and a pair of Channel Lock pliers. I cut as much as I could off and drove that tractor six miles with plastic dragging behind it to get to my truck to go home. The plastic was dragging four or five feet on either side of the tractor as I drove down the road.

Talk about getting some funny looks from the people I met.

Took me most of the next day to cut it out.

The guy renting the barn asked me later if I had seen the plastic tarp that had been there. Then he started laughing. Guess he had heard about my trip down the road.

RSKY

 

[Jstpssng]

I got a piece of chicken wire wrapped around the driveshaft of my pickup once... that was enough of a pain to cut out. I can picture what a mess barbed wire can make of a bush hog at 540 rpms.