ametcalf
Silver Member
About a year ago my BX23 got an intermittent subtle vibration. Mostly when the tractor was moving but sometimes when using only the loader or backhoe. The rpms at which the vibration occurred were not always the same. Two days ago it got much worse while I was working in the woods so I put the tractor up for the day thinking I had gotten the plastic HST fan and I would deal with it later. Yesterday morning we awoke to 5 inches of snow that I really needed to plow so I figured if I didn't use it too much the HST wouldn't get too hot if it ran without the fan for a little while. To my surprise there was very little of the vibration that I had felt two days before. Just as I finished plowing the snow everything quit except the engine. No hydraulics, and it wouldn't go forward or backward in either low or high range. As I thought about it I figured the only thing that could break and cause everything to fail would be either the drive shaft or maybe a catastrophic failure of the HST. I don't know enough about HSTs to know if that was a possibility so I decided to zero in on the drive shaft. I took the skid plate off and was pleasantly surprised to see the HST fan intact. The drive shaft looked ok but when I reached up and felt it I could easily turn it with my hand. At the forward end of the drive shaft is a coupling. With the engine running when I look up under the tractor the coupling is turning but the driveshaft is not. In fact where the shaft exits the coupling there seems to be some slop. I just don't want to reach up and grab it with the engine running for fear of it deciding to catch and start turning with my hand attached. It is my guess that something came apart inside the coupling. I have a big project starting this week that will take about a month so I won't get back to fixing the problem until after that but I am posting now so that if anyone has any ideas I will have more direction when I do get a chance to work on it. I suspect the vibrations I have been feeling were part of the process of the coupling failing. I would appreciate any advice.
