Rotary Cutter slip clutch springs....

[YLee Kioti]

Well the normal annual ritual of gear box oil and slipping clutch was done earlier.....shoot done forgot what month (sigh)..........
Anyways, went to hook up cutter two/three weeks ago now and I hear a rattle.....
Have learned NOT to ignore unusual/unexpected noise/ sounds....etc......so....looking around clutch area a half round piece of metal rolls out.......
Turns out five of the eight springs were broken in multiple places and two of the failed springs had cracks ready to fall apart even more.

Dealer sent me a set to replace them all. Good time to get intimate with assembly. popped clutch plates free from the flanges....(yeah the slip procedure ain't all that hot).
Scotch brite used to scuff them up. The Rhino Engineer responded said they never had this happened. I offered to send them in for root cause analysis, we'll see what he responds with, yea or not needed.

So my point is wanting wanting to share for the TW-26 owners to look at springs on occasion, I cannot imagine what the results would have been had the rest of the springs just failed and all the parts flying out......maybe a smoking clutch making me panic......:shocked:

Let's see if I can gets these pics to upload, otherwise it never happened and this is just another sea story......amah right.......????

Here we go........

 

[Grouse09]

Interesting. Chinese pot metal?

I just did clutch run in on my tiller and rotary cutter. Both Land Pride. I will check to see how the spring look today with a bright light.

Good post.

 

[DieselBound]

Rust in the face of the break (internal) seems to indicate the spring (one of them I can see- didn't scrutinize all of them) had been cracked for a while.

Likely some shock loading and then SNAP. Maybe a bit loose and things got fairly warm on several occasions, enough to weaken the springs?

If the springs all broke you'd lose nearly all of the PTO's power to the gear box of the cutter. Don't think it would have been an added danger. Noisy for sure.

Sometimes it's just a metallurgical flaw. Could be one or a couple and then the rest get stressed and join in on the failure.

Had a travel pedal return spring on my NX5510 fail due to bad metal. I believe is had an internal crack from day one. Really sucked because I had to tow the tractor back home: NEVER get rid of your smaller tractor!