Someone did come up with an easy way. On several tractor makes (i.e. the Ford and a David Brown of my dad's) the operator can freely rotate (as in around and around, very little resistance) the pto shaft by hand when making the connection. Now you want to be careful doing that, for the cautious ones (not me admittedly) you could turn the tractor off. Allowing it to turn freely makes a hookup so much easier, rather than trying to horse the equipment pto shaft. Of course, I am only familiar with an L3010DT, maybe the other models allow you to turn the shaft. While turning it just a bit by hand to get the splines to line up would be easier, the hydraulic clutch on my tractor can be bumped to get the splines to line up. The control lever location makes this fairly easy, but not as easy as just turning it a few degrees by hand.
This is an annoying thing to me. Perhaps they do it specifically to keep people from grabbing the pto shaft when the engine is running. Properly designed and turning sufficiently freely, you don't have to grab tight. A thumb and finger can turn either of the 2 pto shafts I referenced above.
On another issue, the telescoping sway bars also annoy me. They allow as much as an inch of sway at the tips of the lift arms, which correlates to 5-6" out at my mower. When I am in close to something, when the wheels caster it occasionally bangs into things. That David Brown has simple solid bars that goes in the same place, but rigidly attaches at both ends on pins much the same as the end of a lift arm. That system is ROCK solid. It won't move an 1/8" inch. Much simpler and cheaper. But this telescoping is 'user friendly', a piece of crap, though it may be. I agree that every once in a while a bit of slop in the system is handy when you bang into something solid, but if the slop is already taken up for some reason, this safety factor is negated.
'Nuff venting. Really, other than these 2 minor issues, I love my tractor.
Farmer kid usetabe, Farmer Wannabe
