RedDirt
Gold Member
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2007
- Messages
- 469
- Location
- Northern Idaho
- Tractor
- Kubota BX23, Wards 16HP HST Garden Tractor, (previous) D2 Logging Cat
I need to reverse direction on a shaft running forward to an 8 ft front mounted blower and had thought about doing it as you did, with a gear on the rear pto and another on the shaft, but was a little worried about running them in the open. I looked for a field chopper reverser without success and had about decided on the 3 sprocket and chain or a small car differential with the pinion shaft locked down. The gearing directly on the pto would be a whole lot neater and less complicated. Are you running them in the open with grease or did you enclose them in a gearbox with oil? Do you have enough use on it yet to see any problems?
Thanks,
Smiley
My gears are open and I intend to manually grease about every ten hrs +/- when I grease the bearings and PTO. The gears are protected by sheet metal covers as a safety precaution and also to contain the grease that will be slung out. Being a winter snow machine I don't anticipate dust and dirt contamination to be an issue.
I have not used the blower at all except for a full speed test with no load. Still waiting for winter to arrive. I know a lot of the country is getting severe conditions but not here yet.
For gear selection check out the engineering tool at rushgears.com. Using the tool I was able to match the strength of my gears to the tractor's PTO HP. Rush Gears just makes custom one-off gears so buying there is out of the question. I bought my gears from McMaster Carr. They have a decent selection but the 20 degree pitch angle gears I would have preferred (a bit stronger) were not available and I had to settle for 14 1/2 PA gears.
Eyeball engineering said my small gear should not be less than 3" dia ($87+/-). My 1:2 ration dictated the large gear then at 6" ($140). The gears come without keyways or setscrew bores so you'll need to provide them yourself.
Good luck with your project, I had fun with mine. Post you results, others will be interested.