Check your cotter pins

[mfreund]

I was reading a few threads (3720 p/s line and a backhoe coutionary tale) and thought I would share a recent repair. I put my 72" MMM back on my 4310 after some very hard loader work. I made a few passes and went to lift up the deck and it did not lift. I thought what the h*** and pushed the lever down. I then felt the floor raise up under my left heel and said oh s**t. I drove to the garage and climbed under it. The pin that connects the hyd cyl to the rock shaft had fallen out. I found the pin on top of the deck with no cotter pin. Problem found!! I asks myself what caused the floor to rise up? the hyd cyl had pushed the 1 1/4 dia rock shaft about 3/4" forward and sheared the bolt on the rear floor board mount off and broke the top two out of the transmission/axle casting. Looks like I will be busy this afternoon! I took the floor board off and got a good look and that seemed to be all the damage. I took a left handed drill bit and the sheared bolt backed out almost instantly. The floor board casting was streached about half a bolt hole,so I took the trusty die grinder and made the hole longer and when I bolted it back up the top two bolts seemed to tighten up even though half of the bolt holes were broke out! I tookJB Weld and put the top halves of the castings back on after tightening as much as I dared. Tractor fixed now on the the rock shaft. When I took the rock shaft off I noticed the left side was missing the bushing, when someone installed the mid PTO they put the bushing cap on backward and that allowed the bushing to "walk" out. RTFM I was not lucky enough to find it. I have a great neighbor who recycles concrete and thought "I wonder how big his hydraulic press is". The answer is big enough, 20 ton press is big enough to straighten a 1 1/2" steel rockshaft. So far the repairs are holding and I only have $27.50 for two new bushings. Any other ideas for repair on the casting other than JB weld?The moral: When a 2 cent cotter pin falls out it causes a million $ headache!!!

 

[AKfish]

Ouch... That's the kind of surprise all of us can do without! Real creative repairs, though. Impressive.

I don't know what else you can do with cast besides dismantle and either replace the casting or find someone who is very skilled at welding cast materials. Since you were lucky enough to not break the casting - your solution seems as good as any - IMO.

I'll have to put you on speeddial for the next time I mess somethin' up!

Thanks for sharin'.

AKfish

 

[RalphVa]

The cotter pin came out of the shaft holding the forward pedal on my 4010. Replaced it with a key ring behind a washer. Luckily, I was able to back up all the way back to my carriage house where I could park to easily get underneath it.

Ralph

 

[mfreund]

I made sure the new cotter pins were the biggest that would fit and BOTH ends were bent around!!

 

[RalphVa]

Stuff down near the ground can get poked out by all sorts of debris. I kept fighting to keep stuff (like my sulky and cart) connected to the drawbar on my Gravely, as its so low that the bottom of the drawbar often is drug along the ground. Those key rings are about the best and are what I used on the ends of pins that rode down low to the ground. I even had some debris pull the dip stick out of the engine on the Gravely once. Oil sprayed all over the place before I figured out what happened. I learned to always turn the dipstick loop to the inside up tight against the engine block. That's what those engine shrouds are for on the bigger tractors like our CUTs and bigger.

On the JD, I've had some of those pins come out with those circular gizmos that go into the hole and then the circle pops back over the other end of the pin. A cotter pin bent over on both sides is probably the best, after the afore-mentioned key ring.

Ralph

 

[Nuru]

Gee, excellent stories guys, you got me doing inspections at least on amonthly basis, just to see what is going on down there.