Mowing Help. Downed phone cable vs bushhog.

[Green Acres Homestead]

Telephone company left old downed telephone cable across my property. My bush hog found it.

Damage:
1. one of the blades won’t freely rotate. It’s in a fixed position. The other blade will roam freely. The bushhog is new. Maybe 20 hours on it.

What damage can be done to cause the blade not to roam freely. There is one spindle but two blades attached to the stump jumper. I spend a couple of hours untangling the wires?


2. The tractor now smokes at startup and intermittently misses. Kubota tractor has about 200 hours on it. Because the bushhog didn’t hit something solid the clutch didn’t completely slip. The bushhog made 4 or 5 loud bangs and jumps before it stalled the tractor.

What damage could there be to my tractor?

 

[jfsawatzky]

I managed to wedge a small branch or sapling between the blade and stump jumper that caused something like you described.
I believe it also tweaked the seal enough to cause an oil leak by the time I got it stopped and back home.

 

[macdoesit]

Is cable company liable for the damage? How long ago did the cable come down? Did you know the cable was down?

 

[dodge man]

Your tractor engine smokes or the brush hog smokes?

 

[Carl_NH]

Assume there is wire around one of the blades, and maybe around the center spindle too? Has that been removed now?

The tractor is the bigger concern - if you take the load off (no PTO) does it still smoke/miss when running? If so, that's the bigger concern - did it jam/stall quickly or a slow load up? If a fast/hard stop at RPM, this could be bad.

Does the bush hog have a slip clutch - that should have protected the tractor?

The bush hog fix should be easy, the tractor not so much.