PTO to mower deck adapter?

[jim_wilson]

I have been thinking of attempting to make myself a pull behind mower from a belt driven mower deck - the one piece I would need to make this work however is the little gearbox/adapter that sits on the top of the PTO powered mower decks and takes the PTO power 90 degrees to turn the belts on the deck. Does anybody know where I might find something like this?

 

[Taylortractornut]

It may be hard to find in your neck of the woods but here in the south we have alot of old cotton pickers that have a gear box on each one of the picker heads. They have a rectangle telescopic drive shaft. All you have to do is buy one half the yoke for a 1 3/8ths six spline tractor pto. They are a perfect 1 to 1 ratio and hv a 4 bolt flange. The only pisser to them is the gear at the bottom of the shaft runs in a bearing to steady the shaft. I ove came this by heating it cherry read with a rosebud on my torch for about 1 minute then letting air cool. THen i chucked it in the lathe and turned the teeth off the gear to make a round shouldered mounting plates. It sounds like alot of work but its not plus you get 95% of all your drive train. Im building a rotary trencher out of one and I have used them as replacement boxes on finish mowers. I think an IHC cotton picher uses a a beeter gear box that doesnt have to use the gear in the bottom.

 

[Taylortractornut]

It may be hard to find in your neck of the woods but here in the south we have alot of old cotton pickers that have a gear box on each one of the picker heads. They have a rectangle telescopic drive shaft. All you have to do is buy one half the yoke for a 1 3/8ths six spline tractor pto. They are a perfect 1 to 1 ratio and hv a 4 bolt flange. The only pain to them is the gear at the bottom of the shaft runs in a bearing to steady the shaft. I over came this by heating it cherry red with a rosebud on my torch for about 1 minute then letting air cool. Then i chucked it in the lathe and turned the teeth off the gear to make a round shouldered mounting plates. It sounds like alot of work but its not plus you get 95% of all your drive train. Im building a rotary trencher out of one and I have used them as replacement boxes on finish mowers. I think an IHC cotton picker uses a a better gear box that doesnt have to use the gear in the bottom.

 

[kuby]

An old pull type combine would have what your looking for.
Bob

 

[jim_wilson]

I was wondering if maybe there was some place I might be able to get one of them new - I looked at the Surplus Center catalog and did not see anything there. Did some searching on google also and did not find anything. Finding an old piece of equipment I can take the piece off of around here (Massachusetts) is not going to be easy.

 

[Rollinns]

Why not skip that piece and use a vertical shaft engine?

Or better yet skip the mid-mount deck completely.
Consider picking up an old 3pt grooming mower and using it. We are putting an electric start 2-cyl Kohler (horizontal shaft) on a JD 260 (might be a 261) grooming mower (60in). We already mounted two wheels on the front. We also removed the pto shaft and used the gearbox, like what you're wanting to do, we also had a pulley welded up that kept our blade speeds in the range we wanted compared to engine RPMs. All we have left to do is drill holes for the mounting plate we made for the engine and rewire the engine, mount a battery and weld up an offset hitch to pull behind our 3pt 6ft mower and we'll be mowing over 10ft in a single pass. It would have been nice to have had this finished for the past couple months.

I'd consider starting out with a 3pt grooming/finish mower instead of a mid-mount deck, as most of the work will have already been done. Also when building it you can basically just mount everything on top with minimal engineering instead of a mid-mount deck where caster wheels, gearbox, and everything else is custom mounted.

 

[jimgerken]

Surplus Center had some of these, about $110 each, 1:1 ratio. I bought one for my upcoming snowblower project. Tractor Supply Stores can get you one, made for the bush hog mowers. Or, find a farm machinery salvage place, there are many places (besides the excellent ones already mentioned) where right angle drive is used. Manure spreaders have one, corn pickers have a bunch of them. If you have a local industrial supply place which sells electric motors and belts and pulleys and such, they would also have right angle gearboxes on the shelf. Good luck.

 

[jimgerken]

Ah, another idea just ocurred to me. A somewhat more complicated solution, but cheaper, would use a V belt and a couple more idlers to change the direction. This is similar to how a horizontal garden tractor engine drives a belly mower. I think these were called "mule drives", two idlers side by side. The belt has to make some twists, but it is fine to do this to a V belt. Just a thought...

 

[Soundguy]

Tat's how IH did it on the cub belly mowers.

My 66 IH cub has a 44"? IH belly deck.. there is a big pulley on the pto spline.. and a huge v-belt runs down, hits an idler.. goes out straight around the mower pulley.. back to another idler and then back up to the pto pulley... Has worked for a loooong time like this..

Additionally.. how about a small diffy gear setup.. and just lock off one side.. perhaps something out of a small vehicle.. or atv / golf cart? I've seen post hole diggers made this way.. kinda redneck approach to farming.. but then.. I love creativeness.. and the ability to re-use otherwise worthless junk..

Soundguy

 

[Taylortractornut]

Look for Cotton picker salvage yards on google. They should list a place out in Missouri I think its near Branson or Jophlin that has what looks like thousands of them. I have a farmer friend that went out there to get some parts a few months ago. They also mail order to the thing shouldnt be but 50 bucks there plus ups shipping. I have 2 cotton pickers i bought last week but it will be another month before I see them again. I can get whole pickers for 50 to 400 buck here.