NH bar rake, shim under main gear?

[petebert]

New to me New Holland 258 rake. Went and tried it out and it was clicking quite a bit while using it. That quickly turned into not working at all. I undid the axle from the wheel and found I could spin it by hand while it clicked away. Opened up the box to have a look around and nothing really stood out but I found that if I slid the large gear further up on the shaft it's on that it would lock into place with the gear for the rake. So I made some shims real quick out of some pieces of aluminum I had, put a bunch of grease on them and pushed them under the gear to hold it up. Doing this I was able to finish raking the field I was working on.

Anyone heard of this? Is the gear supposed to sit up higher on the shaft or are the gears potentially just worn out? Any reason not to use my shim method? My aluminum pieces where thrown to together quickly but I was thinking I could get some flat steel welded up, get it nice and smooth and just keep a lot of grease on it for the gear to spin on top of.

 

[RPW]

Welcome. Pictures would help.

 

[petebert]

Here's a picture of someone elses gear box from online. See how there's a gap between the bottom of the main gear and the housing. My main gear rests on the bottom of the box, if I lift it up with a screw driver or wedge something in there it will work.

 

[RPW]

Thanks, that helps a lot to understand what you're looking at. It sounds like you're going to have to disassemble the box and I believe you will find that either you've got a missing shim or the bearing is bad or pushed to far into the casing. Possibly froze and ground itself further into the casing.