Fixing the wimpy flail mower

[40Kchicks]

Last year my wife was at a farm auction and they had an older Ford 8’ flail mower. My neighbor had been looking for one for awhile and since we didn’t have any money she called him with the cell phone and told him about it. He drove right over and won the auction for $750 which included the flail mower and a complete set of new extra teeth. The trouble is the thing didn’t seem to do a very good job cutting tall or dense grass. It would just bog down and the grass would wrap up causing the tractor to bog down. He wasn’t very happy with it and didn’t even use it this year because he said that it was hard on his 65hp massy. My M9000 would work better but things still didn’t seem right so I asked a friend who has a new Rears flail mower that he uses on his orchard if the flail mower should handle my grass. He said that he can mow when grass is three feet tall and the prunings are laying in the grass row. The Rears would just eat anything right down to the dirt. He thought the blades must be dull so I checked the blades and they looked OK. So anyways this week I hooked up the flail and tried mowing some sheep pasture that had some weeds and varied lengths of grass not over 10” tall. It wasn’t doing a very good job and then it started free wheeling like a sheer pin had broke. Come to find out the rod that tensions the idler sprocket for the drive belt broke. While fixing it I noticed that the belt sprockets and belt were very hot. I quickly fixed the rod and to my surprise the flail mower worked great. I was able to run twice as fast over any weeds or grass. I even took it out into the 4’tall grass and it still worked. So the belt was slipping since the day my neighbor bought it. I can’t believe this easy fix was the problem and that we didn’t think of this before but the belt did look tight. I’m excited and I’m sure my neighbor will be when he gets back from vacation.

Eric

 

[hobbyfarm]

I was going to say that the bad rotor shaft bearings can cause the belts to run HOT, of course, slipping also makes them run hot.

You should offer to take it off your neighbor's hands while he's displeased with it. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif