kantuckid
Platinum Member
Back during the recent winter storms I had the experience of my draft lever acting strangely & lift barely working. It seemed to be loose at the bottom and I hadn't been inside that area anytime recently to remember how the levers fastened, nor could I see in there. I was fresh out of a shoulder surgery plus my private road was our "way out" for groceries, food, etc., so reluctant to tear into my only road plow-if I could.
last week, when finally past the snow issue, I removed the orange sheet metal plates surrounding the levers to find a simple repair, as a hex head screw had fallen out of the draft lever end. There are two -8mm fasteners holding the end of each lever to the valve stub, with a thin piece of rubber between the lever & stub.
Apparently Kioti felt the rubber would provide some sort of cushioning effect when using the levers?
Where this simple design causes a built-in problem is that the fasteners cannot be properly torqued due to the rubber piece-unless you rely on the lock washers only to retain the hexhead screws. I suppose you could leave them sort of loose and gain cushioning from the rubber but they'd fall out soon that way. My tractor has 350 hrs and all the screws still in place were somewhat loose.
My solution is simply to clean up the threads and use blue Loctite thread locker & plenty of torque to help keep them in place, in addition to the lockwashers. I like the newer stick blue Locktite (or other brands) as it doesn't drip off the threads.
All that to say yer screws might be loose!
:thumbsup:
last week, when finally past the snow issue, I removed the orange sheet metal plates surrounding the levers to find a simple repair, as a hex head screw had fallen out of the draft lever end. There are two -8mm fasteners holding the end of each lever to the valve stub, with a thin piece of rubber between the lever & stub.
Apparently Kioti felt the rubber would provide some sort of cushioning effect when using the levers?
Where this simple design causes a built-in problem is that the fasteners cannot be properly torqued due to the rubber piece-unless you rely on the lock washers only to retain the hexhead screws. I suppose you could leave them sort of loose and gain cushioning from the rubber but they'd fall out soon that way. My tractor has 350 hrs and all the screws still in place were somewhat loose.
My solution is simply to clean up the threads and use blue Loctite thread locker & plenty of torque to help keep them in place, in addition to the lockwashers. I like the newer stick blue Locktite (or other brands) as it doesn't drip off the threads.
All that to say yer screws might be loose!
:thumbsup: