1025R rockshaft woes...

nikdfish · Oct 23, 2020

I finished doing some mowing down the road with the three point finish mower on the 1025R & went to lift it off the ground for the trip back to the house and nothing moved. Looked closer and saw the rockshaft had moved to the left far enough for the right side lift arm to come off. I guess a snap ring came off. The left side arm & shaft end are pinched against the fender frame?

Got back to the house, dismounted the mower & got three point arms off, but cannot budge the shaft. Looks like it has to go back to the dealer for surgery. Waiting on a call-back to set up a time to drop it off. Kinda bummed. The 1025R is my trailer mover & once it is gone I can't move the car hauler or dump trailer in & out of their storage locations - not enough room for the pickup to do it. I'll have to get the car hauler out to trailer the 1025R to the dealer & will just have to leave it out in the open until I go to pick it back up. Push come to shove, I can pick up the 3038e from the acreage & bring it back to the house and use it for trailer duty.

beenthere · Oct 23, 2020

"snap ring" or one of the quick lock pins?

Sorry for your predicament. A picture may help give some helpful advice.

I changed out the quick lock pins to bolts with lock nuts after I had brush rip one off while hogging. Darn near caused a broken casting when the rotary mower swung wildly to the left.

nikdfish · Oct 24, 2020

I got a pic after loading it on the trailer for the trip to the dealer.

The shaft will rotate some, but no movement to the right. Probably interference inside the housing. You can see the right side lift arm is loose from the shaft.

nikdfish · Oct 26, 2020

Well the good news is that it might get fixed by the end of the week (if the part only takes a couple of days). The bad news is the total will be north of $1K. They figure the rockshaft has to be replaced & that is >$400 by itself.

nikdfish · Nov 5, 2020

Picked up the repaired 1025R today. The tab was $1160, the rockshaft itself was $461 & labor was $540.

blacktruck · Nov 5, 2020

Just curious, what caused the failure with your tractor? Was it just a snap ring falling out of place and what caused the shaft to move left? What was the damage that required the shaft replacement?
Sorry for all of the questions but as a maintenance guy, I am curious.

nikdfish · Nov 5, 2020

I'm sure the root cause was loss of the right side snap ring & my not noticing it at the time. I have no idea how long it may have been missing. At the time I discovered the problem, I had just done a few hours of mowing with a 3 point hitch finish mower, with quite a bit of it involving mowing across slopes. I'm guessing the side to side motion of the mower going on/off slope & as I made direction changes eventually just worked the shaft over to the left side. My first inkling that something was wrong was when the mower wouldn't lift when I was ready to head back to the house.

I never saw the shaft after disassembly but there must have been enough damage to warrant ordering a new part. Possibly a surface scar enough that an O-ring might not keep hydraulic from leaking or maybe some tooth chipping. There was some visible loss of fluid at the time I noticed the issue.

blacktruck · Nov 6, 2020

@nikdfish
Thanks for reply. Sorry to see it happened at all. When I first read this, I expected the cost would have been far more but it was expensive enough. Glad to see it worked out well for you.

nikdfish · Nov 6, 2020

Ran into an issue when I remounted the 3pt assembly. At the lowest postion, the draft links were about horizontal instead of nearly touching the ground. The dealer service manager was good about getting a tech out to the house that same day to reset the lift arms position on the rockshaft & adjust the height control linkage so things were back to normal. The tech also helped with hooking up the finish mower to verify the arms were indeed low enough for hookup and also to verify function/range of motion up/down.