MILS153 said:
Hey here's a question Dyer - yes whilst sitting on it last night and again this morning we noticed a slot where a leaver should/would be but nothing there? Since I don't know what I'm talking about will try do describe the best I can. Right side of tractor and the diagram near the slot looked like the piece in the pic (hopefully attached). Was hoping it had something do to with a quick connect for the mid PTO snowblower soon to have attachment and that we are actually not missing something we should have.
Also do you happen to have a log splitter in your arsenal of attachments and if so it work well?
okay....pic attached???
Good morning MILS153,
I know the slot that you are talking about and suspect that it has something to do with some aftermarket add-on, because the manual doesn't even tell you what it's there for. The manual shows you the slot in a picture, but does not refer to it at all. My suspicion is that it would be something to do with a backhoe or something like that, but the tractor comes with nothing in that slot and so you are not missing anything. I had forgotten about it and my neighbor had come down to help me clean the yard during the last storm and asked me about it....thought he'd done something and a knob had fallen through or something, but it was the same slot you are referring to.
The snowblower will hook up to the mid-point pto shaft and you'll engage that with the lever on your left side closest to you. You'll see when you look at it, but you'll pull the lever sideways with some light pressure as you push it forward to engage the snowblower. I hope you get to use it before the end of the year because I think you'll be impressed with how much snow that thing will move and how easy it is. Anyway, I normally have the engine at a lower RPM when I engage the blower and then immediately throttle up to full power and leave it there as long as the blower is in operation. Again, with my short responses here, but don't get discouraged when you go to hook up the shaft from the mid-point to the front shaft where the blower hooks in. The shaft has splines on the male end that only fit into the female side in one position. There is some sort of "double key" portion that allows you to hook it up without screwing it up, but sometimes it's very hard to find the matching point. Once you find it and slide it on, you'll feel the locking collar click into place and you'll be overcome with this euphoric feeling of accomplishment.......don't then get tempted to unhook it and try it again to see what was so darned difficult the first time, because you'll go through the same mess again, ha! If any of this doesn't sound like it makes sense, it will after you've done it a couple of times...trust me!
The lever on your left side farthest away from you has three settings and you can run your blower from the middle position (Mid-Rear-PTO position) or from the position all the way to the rear (Mid-PTO position.) You won't hurt anything by having it in the middle position, but every once in a while you can tap that lever getting on and off the tractor and it will slip forward to the rear-PTO position without you realizing it (even to the point where it looks like the knob hasn't moved) and you'll scratch your head trying to figure out why the blower won't engage and start looking up Dealer phone numbers, panic sets in, etc. That will eventually happen to you, so just remember to jiggle that outer knob if that happens and you'll feel it engage back to where it is supposed to be.
I hope I'm not offending you with these simplistic explanations, but they've all happened to me and I was dialing the phone to Hammond Tractor one day when I finally looked at the PTO lever and realized that it had been accidentally pushed forward, so it's all from experience.
I have not had any implements on the rear of the tractor that require the rear PTO and, therefore, no experience with a splitter on the back. Take advantage of this forum and ask that question though. I've seen threads on wood splitters and I can't see whey they wouldn't work just fine. If you ask the question, you'll get answers to your questions that you hadn't even yet considered, so it's worth it.
Sounds like you are having good fun already...keep it up. Dyer, retired