<font color="blue"> In the first pic the lower lift arms look pretty high. Is the mower pivoting on the lift arms or is it pushing or raising the link arms up into the pto. I was just wondering if the lower lift arms are moving, </font>
In the first picture the lift arms are high. Slack in the toplink allows the the mower to pivot that way, but it would be laying nice and close to the ground if the tailwheel weren't blocked.
To get into position for the picture, I backed the tailwheel up against a heavy piece of steel (not visible in the picture). When the tailwheel first contacted the immoveable steel, the deck was flat and close to the ground. But, as I continued to back up a foot or so, the tailwheel stayed put, and the front of the deck raised to compensate for the tractor continuing to back up. Eventually, with enough slack in the toplink, the front of the deck contacts the PTO shaft. At that point I set the parking brake and took the picture.
The same thing happens when backing into brush, or anything that blocks the tailwheel. Driving forward, the deck would look normal, close to the ground, ready to cut. Even backing up, everything stays as it should, until the tailwheel gets stopped, then the front of the deck will raise as far as toplink slack will allow. With little slack, the front of the deck will not raise enough to touch the PTO shaft. But, with the shorter toplink you loose terrain following ability.
You see, the problem has been that I mow over some irregular terrain, including backing the deck over the sides of ditches. Extra slack in the toplink allows better terrain following in regular mowing, and better cutting further down the side of the ditch I'm backing up to. A little extra slack is good for those situations. The downside of shortening the toplink is the tailwheel can't terrain follow, it just gets pulled up into the air going across bumps and dips. With the toplink a little on the long side (the way I like it), unless I would get off the tractor and shorten the old, threaded link manually (which I never did), the PTO shaft shield was always in jeopardy of damage whenever backing up. The shield paid the price and was eventually ruined. The spinning PTO shaft wore right through the plastic.
With the hyd. toplink, a flick of the wrist and all the slack is removed...nice!! I was encouraged enough to even buy a new shield, so far so good. But, I feel like my brush hog settings could definitely use adjusting, so I started this thread looking for some help. And I appreciate the input.
OkieG