Did a bunch of messing around today.. Went out with the scraper removed, as expected that was not good.... :laughing:
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After cleaning that off I checked pto rpm, by running the tractor at half pto speed I was able to count revolutions and 50 revs took 15 seconds. x4 to get to a minute and double because of the half engine speed gives 400 shaft rpm at the noted 540 pto speed on the tach so for whatever reason it's off a fair amount. I suspect the tach might not be original as it has mph in gears that doesn't account for the dual range transmission option that mine has. I've mostly been mowing above that rpm anyway as the motor is happier there, but went out and tried it at around 1900 rpm instead of 1500 (rated pto engine speed), may have cut a tiny bit better but no real change. As I waited for a return call from Betst I started to reinstall the scraper and noted that I could get it right up against the roller this time. I think it originally had come loose (or was never tightened properly) and because there is some odd slop in the bolts holes it would jam and not move over by the roller, leading me to think you couldn't get it close. You have to mess around with it a bit to get it over by the roller. Bolted it down right against the roller, tried again and huge improvement initially, then the scraper came loose and moved away from the roller and it loaded up again.. After tightening to the point of almost stripping the two bolts I went back out one more time and it was working decent, but eventually the tractor just bogged down again. There wasn't much on the roller this time though the ends where the shaft tapers still loaded up, so may possibly still have issues with the tractor itself. There was quite a bit of grass wrapped around the main shaft when I got back, but I had tried to go forward again several times with the tractor bogging so I don't know if that was loaded up the first time it came to a stop or after. So much grass wraps up on the tapered ends of the shaft that it compacts tightly around the bearings and they start to run hot even after a short time. I think a big part of the issue now may be that the knives just aren't cutting well, there shouldn't be any long grass left to wrap around like that.
leonz,
Some pieces of tape and rotating the pto by hand shows the gearbox to be about 2.8:1, and the pulleys about 1.4:1, so at 540 pto would give around 2120 main shaft rpm.
When you talk about 37 degrees is that some proven angle to work well on a flail slicer? Mine had more of an edge originally as dirt gopher mounds have rounded them a bit, but if moving fast enough should be cutting ok anyway.. If you are just referring to the half of the blade near the mounting hole no there aren't any edges, but when I look up other flail knives that seems to be quite common. I think part of the issue here is that there aren't as many blade stations as some flails, and you can tell a lot of grass is hitting the knife mounts because of the grass caught in them.
Alien,
Yes it has skids but they aren't designed to drag around on the skids, they are meant to take the weight on the rear roller. Skids are for rough terrain and parking...
