Harbor Freight QH interference with PTO shaft

[number9L]

I run the HF QH and on occasion have had it contact the PTO shaft of my LandPride finish mower. It only happens when I am backing up a bank. The deck starts up the bank and as it rises the PTO shaft comes in contact with the bottom of the QH. Makes a vibration something awful for sure. I thought about cutting the QH right under the top hook and welding in a section of thick walled pipe cut in half to make an upside down U for the shaft to have clearance. That would work, but I hated to hack up the QH.

So, I got some 3/8" x 2" flat stock at TSC and just recreated the lift pin mounts and welded it on top of the existing mounts. Haven't used it yet, but this will raise the QH 2-1/4" higher above the PTO shaft and I think it will work out fine.

Just thought I'd post as I can't be the only one that's ever had this happen.

...

 

[BukitCase]

Yeah, my tiller doesn't do that but my Caroni TM1900 flail does - haven't used it since (other projects higher priority for now) but I have patterns cut out to do basically what you did.

At least on the Caroni, the top link won't need as much surgery since for some reason, Caroni thinks that Cat 1 drawpin spacing combined with Cat 2 height between drawpins and toplink is a clever thing to do ??!?

BTW, I only noticed this problem on one of my tractors - the other one's pto has a bit different geometry relative to the hitch, and seems to do OK... Steve