I went out to clear the second half of our 20" snow, my 12 year old front mount Kubota blower broke. I usually go through a shear pin or two, but this was a quick "plink" and everything stopped. I lifter the blower and backed up to take a look and found the reduction chain laying on the ground. Picked it up and headed back to the shed. I spent the next hour+ taking the blower off and putting the loader/backhoe on the BX22 to dig out the driveway (8/10 of a mile). It took me a total of 9 hours clearing 10+ inches. With all of the snow on the ground already, had to pile it quite high.
Back to the failure. I lube the chain at the beginning of each season with a light lithium grease. A postmortem on the chain looks pretty much like the clip came off the master link which led to a jam, bent links and broken rollers. Sprockets were okay. My next surprise was that the PTO drive shaft fell apart. The long center shaft is welded to a U-joint on each end. The jam chain jam broke a weld between the shaft and the U-joint. The weld did look like it penetrated much, and the jam torque pulled a bit of the cast steel off the U-joint. It was only about 1/16" to 1/64" thick, which appears to be the amount of penetration. A buddy of mine was able to MIG the shaft back on, saving me $ 300. The chain is almost $ 60 from Kubota, but the manual luckily specs it as an ANSI #40 chain. I was able to get 10' of chain, 4 master links and a chain breaker from Amazon all for $ 30. Lots of spares. Hopefully I can get the parts and get everything back together before the next snow. Bucket works okay, but takes a LOT of time.
paul
Back to the failure. I lube the chain at the beginning of each season with a light lithium grease. A postmortem on the chain looks pretty much like the clip came off the master link which led to a jam, bent links and broken rollers. Sprockets were okay. My next surprise was that the PTO drive shaft fell apart. The long center shaft is welded to a U-joint on each end. The jam chain jam broke a weld between the shaft and the U-joint. The weld did look like it penetrated much, and the jam torque pulled a bit of the cast steel off the U-joint. It was only about 1/16" to 1/64" thick, which appears to be the amount of penetration. A buddy of mine was able to MIG the shaft back on, saving me $ 300. The chain is almost $ 60 from Kubota, but the manual luckily specs it as an ANSI #40 chain. I was able to get 10' of chain, 4 master links and a chain breaker from Amazon all for $ 30. Lots of spares. Hopefully I can get the parts and get everything back together before the next snow. Bucket works okay, but takes a LOT of time.
paul
