At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

I'm fine with burning pine. I have more than enough pine in my firewood stack. I'm at the point where I already have more downed oak than I can seem to cut and split. So if have to choose, I'd rather spend the same amount of time cutting and splitting oak.

Obed

 

[Obed]

For a while, I've been having trouble putting my tractor in reverse. The JD has hydrostatic transmission. When I would push down the reverse pedal, the tractor would move in reverse just fine. However, the pedal would "stick" in the down position. I would have to actually pull the pedal up with the back of my heel to stop the tractor. I thought a spring might be bad.



When I looked under the tractor, there was a plastic cover over the pedal mechanism which prevented me from seeing underside of the HST pedals. Removing the plastic cover would ruin some plastic push pins holding the plastic in place so I procrastinated doing anything.



Finally, one day I pushed the reverse pedal down and nothing happened. I couldn't get the tractor to move in reverse at all. It became apparrent that I couldn't procrastinate any longer and had to look at it.

The pin from the link that attached to the pedal arm had rusted to the pedal where the pin went through a hole in the pedal arm. After rusting completely, the pin broke off the link and stayed frozen inside the hole in the pedal arm.



Here's the pin sticking through the pedal arm.



I had to figure out how to get the rusted pin out of the hole through the pedal. I attached a pair of vice grips to the pin to see if I could twist it out of the hole. The pin was made out of really cheap soft metal. The protruding end of the pin just twisted off when I tried to rotate it with my vice grips.



So I now needed to attempt to drill out the pin. Unfortunately, the pedal arm was in a tight spot so I couldn't get my drill into position to drill out the pin. Completely removing the whole pedal mechanism in order to get to the frozen pin looked like a very big job and was something I wanted to avoid.

Meanwhile, my wife ordered a link to replace the broken one.

I headed to the big box store to find a right angle drill. They had a cordless right angle drill for $180. Ouch. I couldn't justify spending that much. Finally, another customer showed me a right angle drill attachment that I could use with my existing drill.



The right angle drill attachment worked like a charm.



I finally could replace the broken link.



It's kind of nice having a tractor that can go in reverse.

 

[Beltman60]

yep reverse is good

 

[MoKelly]

Nice work shoes! Just kidding - I have ones just like them.

MoKelly

 

[Dishpointer]

Good Job! Yep, definitely need reverse.

 

[Coyote machine]

Glad to hear the saw chain stops as it should within a couple of seconds. Another trick is to put the saw chain against a log to stop the spin sooner- especially useful when limbing and bucking long lengths.

I have the same angle drill attachment. The earlier version, same company broke, housing cracked, IIRC, and they sent me a new one when I called and plead my case.

Next time, assuming there is room in a similar situation, you can/could use a propane hand held torch, or Mapp gas, and heat up the arm near the pin and drive it out out with a suitable drift, (pin punch). I would grease the C out of that pedal area before sealing it back up, and you should be good for a long time.

AND, try http://www.kanolabs.com/, a 'super-penetrating' fluid that works great!
(I originally found out about it on TBN).

 

[dstig1]

Obed, Sorry for the jab - I should have figured you had enough pine, but I don't recall that much from back in the thread, I guess. I can fully understand if you have enough low value wood, you should focus on the high value wood. Fer sure.

As for your link problem, you may want to think about some air tools. The first thing I would have done would be to get the air hammer and some penetrating oil. Might have pushed it out in no time that way. A decent compressor is very helpful for this. If you can swing a 60 or 80 gal compressor - even a single stage, it id an enormous help around the house for stuff like this. Most things that size have enough reserve to do harder tasks like air hammers and impact wrenches, but smaller ones can work OK as long as you rest to give them recovery time. Not sure what you might already have though...

Glad to see you fixed it yourself. As you found, most problems really aren't that complicated once you look into it. I wish more people would try.

 

[PAGUY]

Good job Obed. I bet you felt a real feel of accomplishment by fixing it DIY.

It just goes to show you another weak engineering concept that was bound to fail sooner or later and usually at the most inopportunely time.

 

[dave1949]

Yes, good fix. I wonder if the plastic cover is actually trapping moisture in that area?

 

[Larro Darro]

I wonder if the plastic cover is actually trapping moisture in that area?

I was thinking the same thing. A couple of small holes drilled in the bottom might be a good idea.