Flail mower noise

[leonz]

Hello and good morning Ricn,

First things first; you need to purchase a V belt tension guage from amazon or a gates V belt dealer. The amount of tension they are recommending for a three belt pulley system is too loose.

If your son has a mechanics stethoscope you can do this: when the tractor and mower are operating at the PTO speed of 540 RPM you can use the mechanics stethoscope to check for bearing noise. if there is any noise coming from the bearings it will be transmitted through the bearing housings and you will hear it and you need to call the seller and ask them what to do as it should not be doing this IF and only IF it does not sound like a vacuum cleaner when mowing at a 2 inch height with the belts tighter than they recommend.

If it sounds as if the mower sounds like a ready mix truck with granite aggregate with no water in it rolling around at idle its not healthy.

 

[Ricn]

Thanks Leonz for this feedback. Will work at these suggestions. The belts adjustment says 3/8's at 10lbs pressure so the gauge would be much more accurate than my fingers pushing on the belts for sure. I can get one of those from Amazon. We did notice, and when tightening the adjuster nut, that the three belts seemed to tighten unevenly, not a lot mind you, but a slight difference. The middle belt was the one we used for our final finger pressure test having the most tension of the three.

"So if the factory setting of 3/8 inch is to loose, what setting would be correct?"

Ricn

 

[leonz]

Hello Ricn,

OK, I will vent my spleen now GROWL HISSSS;


Its sounds exactly like they did not install three identical V belts with the same lot number and that is why you have the middle belt that is not tensioned.

If you are this far along I would check the ID numbers as they are the lot numbers.


If the name of the manufacturer is still visible and they have a web site you should be able to access their page that describes what they want to
see for the proper tension of the V belts.


A faster way would just go to the Gates Web site and look up their recommended belt tension recommendations.

You are stuck though; as the center belt is still too loose I would purchase 3 new V belts with identical lot numbers
as you will know that the webbing/thread used to reinforce the V belts came from the same lot number/spool.

A V belt that is loose will make a lot of noise so keep that in mind but you can still use the mower with the outer
and inner V belts for now if you remove the center V belt.

Its too bad that they did not use a triple web belt in the same size as you would not have the loose center V belt.

 

[Ricn]

The middle belt is tighter of the three, we set our tension using the middle belt.

 

[Billrog]

Ricn have you inspected the roller and knives thoroughly for a loose or bent knife hitting on the house or a small stick stuck stuck in there hitting on the housing because what you describing isn't a bearing or a belt noise. I've burned off belts, replaced bearings & the only thing that made a racket was wire , stick or a knife pulled loose. When I bent the drum holding the knives on my old flail I used it for a few more years but it vibrated and made a lot of noise.

 

[Ricn]

Billrog. Will be checking this for sure. Have done a quick glane already but something more is on my list, thaks!

 

[Ricn]

My flail mystery has been solved. My two Sons, bless their souls, came by today for supper. Now, if having boys yourselves, you all know how they love their Mothers cooking, so after their second helping and with cake afterwards they went to the barn listening to the flail noise where upon they tore it all down in maybe 45 minutes and wow, the drive side bearing is toast! on a brand new Woodmaxx with 6 hours maybe, just maybe of use and with NSK bearings. So the story continues but with the youngest taking both ends to his shop where he will replace bearings and seals with new and reinstall everything next weekend. At our age these boys are such a blessing but they always have been; we always give praise to God for them. - Thanks again for all the pointers and answers, never to old to learn.

Will post again when it's all running again!

Ricn

 

[Billrog]

:thumbsup:

 

[leonz]

Hello Ricn,

I am unable to sleep and I am glad I have visited the forum. I am sorry to hear that you lost the bearings.
Six hours for a bearing to go bad is too short a life span.

It would be great if your boys could describe what they found and whether the inner race on the drive side was spinning and not locked in place.
They should have no trouble finding bearings and seals for the flail mower, The national oil seal companies seal are still available as far as I know.
SKF, Timken, and Sealmaster roller bearings are still available as well and the seals and bearings will all match up as all bearings are metric.


leonz

 

[Ricn]

I believe the inners are tight. My Son took the necessary parts home saying, they must be pressed out and back in. They are taking care of all this for me and will be out next weekend to get things all together and running correctly, a blessing for sure! I will seek the answers to your questions when they come and let you know what they say. - The drive bearing was a mess, little balls and metal fragments all clustered up in a gooey ball. The other end is fine but they are replacing everything on both ends. This mower has NSK bearings that I'm told are good but my Son is getting another brand I believe, something he uses lots of in his gravel crushing business. It is his opinion this was caused by my over greasing but could also be a defective bearing as well, to hard to tell but I had way to much grease in both bearings evidently. He went on to say that, three years ago he had a bearing rep come out due to all their equipment bearing failures. This resulted in having employees grease bearings from a chart provided by the bearing manufacturer based on rpm and hours of run time, and with the correct amount of grease pumped in for each bearing application. This program has dropped failure rate by some 75% on machinery that runs 12 hour days.
Ricn