Sweepster Rotary Broom - rebuild and modification

[dstig1]

I refined my CAD model a bit and added the bearings. Actually I have changed it a bit since I took that screen shot, but, meh, close enough. I also made a mock-up out of hardboard and 2x4 blocks to see better how it fits. I can see i will need some relief around the axle so it can pivot and not bind up on the rails.

Looks like I am ready to order up some steel Mon AM. One full 20' stick of 4" x 5/16" is going to make up the bulk of this thing. I'll need some other bits beyond that like some 2" wide flat bar but first things first. The steel place is close so no big deal making an extra trip or two. So I can rough out the basic frame and see what else I need so I don't buy stuff I won't need.

 

[dstig1]

I've been chipping away at this in between other things. Making some progress. I have the basic frame together, the 2 mid bearing mounts in place and the rear mount of the frame to tractor settled. Here are a few pics.

This one is the skeleton of the frame with mid bearings and you can see the rear mount bracket on the right. It will get a lot more reinforcement before it is complete, but first things first.

These 2 pics show the above frame in place and connected. Looking forward from rear. In the second pic you can see the 2 bolts going up into the transmission case for the rear mount.

And then laying out to mount the front bearing. That black round part is the spline shaft adapter for the pump. I just ordered the pump as I will need that to get the rest of the front-end figured out. You can see the solid rectangular shaft poking through the bearing. There is a similar adapter for that shaft that you can't see. I will have a machinist friend turn the piece that goes in between those 2 adapters and then I will weld up those 3 parts to make this one solid adapter which will finally be welded to the rect shaft, which will need to be shortened. The middle part is slightly bigger diameter and will be machined to the bore of the bearing. This bearing will be set back a few inches as shown and then one more plate will be put on the front and machined to match the SAE-B hyd pump mount on the nose of the pump. Slide the pump into the spline adapter on the end of the shaft, connect the 2 bolts to the plate and ready to go. The pump stays with the attachment.

But before I get too far on that front I need to make the mounts for the middle and front that hold all this to the tractor. So that will be next as i wait for the pump to arrive.

And then just for giggles I plotted the engine RPM vs Mid PTO RPM:

 

[dstig1]

More progress. Have continued picking away at this. Got the shaft adapter made by a machinist friend of mine so that is ready to go and the last piece of the puzzle to put this all together. I finished everything that made sense to do from under the tractor so I pulled the subframe out and got it on the bench. Front bearing plate is tacked in, all supports are fully tacked in. The pump mount plate was also bored out by my friend to fit the SAE B mount pump, but I haven't tacked that in yet. Here is a look at the subframe on the bench

In the first two photos you can see the pump supported on a stand at the front of the frame and the large square bearing pillow block which is the front bearing. Everything is fully fitted up now and the rectangular PTO shaft which is right behind that front bearing was cut to fit.

Next step is I need to weld the parts of the adapter shaft together as they are currently just lightly press fit together. The adapter is the piece between the pump that goes thru the front bearing and also gets welded to the rectangular PTO shaft on the other side of the front bearing. Once I get that welded up, I can set the final position of the pump mount plate and tack that in. It would be nice to have a rotary weld positioner to do that, but I will have to get by doing it in short sections and then turning it.

Then it is on to fully welding out the whole thing and then powder coat. I still have a few braces and such to add in there, but nothing major.

Plus I also checked to make sure i could actually get the shaft pieces and bearings in and out of the frame which is pretty important to do before you weld it all solid...

I'm hoping to get this into powder coat sometime next week. Then I can move onto the sweeper unit for the real fun!

 

[dstig1]

Subframe is all fully fitted and welded-out. I just need to check that it doesn't interfere with the axle pivot before I send it in for powder coat, but I need to put the loader back on for that so I can lift the front end - tomorrow after work.

 

[ededic]

Nice work. Can’t wait to get my metal shop outfitted and going. Looks great.

 

[TMGT]

Looks good, I would suggest you make a shield/protector for that pump sitting out there if you haven't already. I deal with trash trucks a lot that have a pump mounted off the front and you would be surprised how much they get bumped!

I lucked out and got a 3pt broom really cheap so I'm sticking with pto power for now.

 

[dstig1]

Thanks TMGT. You gave me something to think about for a while, but in the end I don't think it is going to be the same problem you see. The pump was only present in those photos to set up the mounting and get the shaft dimensions right. In reality the pump stays with the attachment on the FEL, and does not stay on the tractor. When the sweeper is mounted on the SSQA, I will connect the pump. When I pull the sweeper, the pump stays with it. I did that as connecting hoses is always a PITA and this way I keep the entire hydraulic system closed and isolated on the attachment. So the FEL will protect it for the most part. My primary use for the sweeper is snow removal, so it won't be going offroading in the woods with this on it.

And the only 2 times I have taken the FEL off were when I initially got the tractor so I could work on building the third function, and again these past couple weeks to work on the subframe (it was FAR easier to do that without the loader in the way with how often I had to get under and around the tractor...)

There is no way my neck could tolerate the constant looking back for running a 3pt blower or broom, but it certainly is a lot cheaper! I'll be well over $3k by the time I am done. But a good part of it is the fun in the engineering and building of it...

 

[TMGT]

Thanks TMGT. You gave me something to think about for a while, but in the end I don't think it is going to be the same problem you see. The pump was only present in those photos to set up the mounting and get the shaft dimensions right. In reality the pump stays with the attachment on the FEL, and does not stay on the tractor. When the sweeper is mounted on the SSQA, I will connect the pump. When I pull the sweeper, the pump stays with it. I did that as connecting hoses is always a PITA and this way I keep the entire hydraulic system closed and isolated on the attachment. So the FEL will protect it for the most part. My primary use for the sweeper is snow removal, so it won't be going offroading in the woods with this on it.

And the only 2 times I have taken the FEL off were when I initially got the tractor so I could work on building the third function, and again these past couple weeks to work on the subframe (it was FAR easier to do that without the loader in the way with how often I had to get under and around the tractor...)

There is no way my neck could tolerate the constant looking back for running a 3pt blower or broom, but it certainly is a lot cheaper! I'll be well over $3k by the time I am done. But a good part of it is the fun in the engineering and building of it...

Sounds good, was just thinking something like thr Mack concrete trucks have a little "A" shaped guard around the front mounted pump.
It probably wouldn't be a problem with how you're going to use it, just figured it might give the pump and hoses some protection. Seems like I get damage to at the weirdest times, once wrinkled a fender from a branch plowing snow in my driveway! Got caught in the tire and wedged between the tire and fender lip.

Agreed on having to look backwards for the pto brooms, but at under $700 into a like new hyd. angle 6ft broom I figure I can live with it

 

[dstig1]

Got it back from the powder coaters, got everything assembled, greased and mounted up perfectly fine with a test run (without the pump). They had a stock gray color that is lighter than Kubota gray but looks nice. Pic of it all assembled. Didn't take a shot of it installed, but it looks the same as above, just painted. First half of this adventure is complete...Now to find time to start on the sweeper!

 

[dstig1]

Welll alrighty! Let's get this going again... I got distracted for the past couple months so am only now getting to the actual sweeper rebuild. First this thing followed me home:

It took quite a while to clean it up and replace the wear items, plus come up with a VFD to run it, but now that is in place. I figured a Bridgeport would be helpful for the mods to the Sweeper too...

But I was also rebuilding my little tiller that we acquired from my late MIL's estate and that is in this thread:

Tuffy rebuild

We got my MIL's old Troy Bilt Tuffy after she passed a few years back and I am getting around to dealing with it now. Carb needs help, no surprise, so will probably just replace. But here is the main question. All gear oil leaked out due to a couple bad seals on the wheel and tine axles. I...

www.tractorbynet.com

So now with all that stuff out of the way, it was time to drag the sweeper inside and start the teardown today. I got all the hoses and fittings off and removed the angle cylinder, which I was shocked to see it actually come off as I thought it was rusted on solid. But a 3-arm puller got one end moving and the other ball end just popped off miraculously. So off to a good start! I still think i will need to replace it, but at least I didn't have to cut it off. You can see the angle cyl in the 2nd pic below:

Then I discovered that the broom spins fine with it up on blocks, so the motor and free-end bearing appear to be good. Huge win on the motor as that is an expensive bugger. The bearing ended up being seized to the shaft so I did have to cut and beat it off of the shaft, but it looked like replacing it was the wise move in any case.

Still lots of cleaning and such to do, and I need to replace the broom sections entirely as they are very brittle. Getting that apart will be the next task and about the last part of actual tear-down. Next after that will be figuring out what to cut off the current hacked-up mount to put on the SSQA plate and the hyd tank and other such fun.

I don't really have a good way to lift heavy objects in the shop right now as the tractor is my only real lifting device and that is of course very limited to manuever. Thinking I might want to get a cherry picker or something but then I need to find a place to store THAT too. More to come, but there will probably be a lot of down time trying to sort out where to put everything as the tank is a big issue and I still need to be able to mount the angle cyl, the SSQA plate and the structure to tie it all together and be able to hang the sweeper from springs for the right ground contact/pressure.

 

[dstig1]

Well when I called the factory with a few questions one thing they said was you don't want poly/wire mix for residential use as the wires get stuck in everything (and eventually probably your tires too), so I was planning on getting rid of that (this one was 50/50 poly/wire as purchased). Well I found another reason to avoid wire - impossible to take apart. They tell you to take off the end cover and start sliding the sections off to change the broom. Riiiiiiight. The wire sections tangle together and it is utterly impossible to break them loose. I ended up having to chop them into sections and then cut through the tangle of wires to get them off, bit by bit. The poly sections came off reasonably but the wire ones were impossible. That was a lot of fun.

But here is the bare core now. Just need to get the motor off now (rt side). Got the nut off by some miracle but the shaft is wedged/rusted in pretty good. Soaking in penetrating oil for now and will probably get the air hammer/chisel involved tomorrow. Maybe some heat if that doesn't do it.

And the pile of broom bits. The plastic ones will go in the trash but the metal ones can go in the recycle bin (which is free!). The last few sections came off as one clump which saved a little time.

That was truly awful. Fortunately I'm guessing the last time I'll have to do it in my lifetime... Amazed I didn't start a fire with all the dried leaves, grass and such embedded in all this coupled with abrasive cutoff wheels. Tomorrow - to the dump with old broom chunks!

 

[dstig1]

Well something is always interfering with progress... I went to load up the truck to haul the scrap broom parts and the brake pedal went to the floor and I saw fluid at the rear passenger side wheel and then found this mess:

So with that fixed it was time to wrap up the disassembly part of our saga and start figuring out what to do next. That just happened tonight. In the pic below you can see the main pieces of this. That angle plate/frame in the middle was just pulled off the broom mount on the left before the pic, so that will go right back together later. The angle plate pivots the sweeper on that pivot bolt in the center via the cylinder from earlier pics on those 2 large pins in the foreground. The right side of the pic is where the head scratching starts.

I will be making the tank, and it needs to fit in between the SSQA plate on the FEL and the frame. I also need to figure out how to mount the main sweeper frame to the SSQA plate while still allowing room for the tank. I've run some basic volume calcs and there are a variety of configurations that will do it. Something around 36x18x9" will do it. The upper part of that A-frame on the main mount was a hack added on by a previous owner that will no doubt be coming off, but that will come later once I figure out what I want to do. The SSQA plate is 45" wide and the heavy channel on the main frame mount is currently ~52" long and it has some slots in it for brackets for a 3pt mount that you can see in the previous post if you zoom in.

So I'm open to suggestions here. I want to keep it as close as possible but the tank has only one reasonable place to fit, so I need some structure to bridge around the tank. It would be a little easier if that angle cylinder pin was not there, but I'm not sure moving it is a good move. I may need to replace it as it was also hacked on there by previous owner. Also welding the tank leak tight is going to be enough of a challenge to my welding skill set so no need to make it more complex than a basic box.

So let's hear your ideas, TBN! I'll keep noodling on this myself, of course.

 

[pmsmechanic]

So my 1st question is why does the tank have to go between the SSQA and the main mount? If you are going to remove the "A frame" anyways why can't the tank go in that spot? You might need to mount it a bit higher then but it's not going to restrict any visibility if it's mounted higher. You could also then build more of a square box for the tank. You might need to angle the front corners of the tank to leave room for the broom when angled. I'm not there so it's not as easy to visualize how everything fit's together.

 

[dstig1]

Thanks for the ideas. I think it would sit way too high there, but I can look into it more. The A-frame is part OEM and part hacked on. If you look at the vertical upright, a little over halfway up there is a weld going across it. That weld and above was hacked on. And then those 2 braces going forward with the plate to mount the valve were part of the hack. The rest of it is OEM and should probably stay by all rights. No time tonight but tomorrow I should get a chance to look into it more again. The parts in the red outline are the hack that will probably get cut off.

 

[dstig1]

As I start to sort out the engineering details on this, the one point I am a bit stuck on at the moment is how much fluid capacity I really need. I have seem "rules of thumb" that say 1x flow, 2x flow, 3x flow is needed but nothing really definitive. I do NOT want to have to add radiator cooling to this but obviously the bigger the tank, the more weight, space, and complexity it adds. The main plan is for snow removal, so cold temps, which helps reduce the need for a large hydraulic reservoir. It will be used at times during other seasons to do various clean up tasks but those uses will be much shorter duration. Based on my tests and pump I am looking to be running in the 16-20 gpm range for this. Is a 25 gal tank too big? too small? Just right? I see log splitters with 22 gpm pumps and 6-7 gal tanks, but most of the fluid obviously goes into bypass right back itno the tank except for the moments you are actually splitting wood. If I could use 10-15 gal, that would be great. Making a change after the fact will be very painful as it will be all painted and purdy looking...

 

[dstig1]

Many things getting in my way on this but I am getting back to it more seriously. I did a bunch of design what-if's in CAD to help sort out some issues on how to plumb all this and deal with component placement and tank design. Now that I think I have that all settled I have started to dig into the modifications to the existing metal and repairs, etc that need to be done before I can move forward.

So here is the main frame before I cut it all apart (sort of, it is already cut but this mostly shows what it was like).

The pin for the angle pivot cylinder was a hacked-up mess so I decided to just cut it off and start again. Some PO also hacked on an extra frame to use it on a 3-pt hitch which also went away.

And Viola!

So I used my oxy-propane torch and cut off wheels to get these parts off. I am not good with the torch plus access was tough in corners, so gouged into the meat of the frame in a few spots. I ground out any residual slag and welded those back up to solid and then ground it off flat so this is good to go for the next step.

The shroud for the rotary broom had some damage to it, so i repaired that. Again not easy as I have 045 wire threaded up in the MIG and this is probaly 16 ga sheet metal. Yes, I probably should have rethreaded 030 wire but that is a pain and I am lazy... So a billion tacks and a half dozen grinding sessions and it is basically fixed up. Except I think I saw one blowout that I missed so I should fix that first before moving on... But after that it is on to making the structure to tie the frame shown above to the SSQA plate, with room for the tank. I am having a shop cut and bend the tank parts for me as I cannot do that. Other parts on order... Trying to move this along so I can actually use it this winter!

I've no experience with sheet metal, so this was no more than "good enough" to get it in decent shape for later powder coating.

 

[Sportsman762]

Thanks for keeping us updated on this. I am enjoying this thread and your work.

 

[dstig1]

A bit more progress but also stalled waiting for some parts to show up. I have a shop cutting and bending the parts for the tank and that is now ready to pick up Fri but I also need the new angle cylinder. I tried to get the old one repaired but the hydraulic shop could not get this one apart so I coughed up for new on that. Not sure when that will show up, but I'm hoping maybe next week?

So I have most parts cut and fitted and ready to weld but I don't want to jump the gun on that until I know it all fits and seems to work right. So here is everything dry fitted.

Here is an overview of the fitup where I used the old angle cylinder as a placeholder. You can see the pressure relief valve on the SSQA plate (more below on that). I still need to work out an attachment at the top of the central tower to the SSQA.

A look from above

From the other end ("passenger" side). The square tube is 4x4x1/4" wall and they are cut at a 20degree angle as that appeared to be what the factory did for tilting the SSQA plate on their OEM version of this, so I followed what they did. I assume it is to allow enough curl rollback.

And here you can see the pump on the left (below the FEL crossbar) and the back of the SSQA plate. Right below the upper latch handle in the photo is a ~3.5" hole through the plate for the hoses to and from the pump. The pressure relief valve is mounted right there with a JIC elbow poking through it (seen in photo 1 from the front). The pressure hose will go from the pump to that port. The pump inlet hose will go from the tank (not shown yet - tomorrow!) and also through that hole. I will line it with a slit length of rubber hose for an anti-chafing grommet. I'm working on figuring out how long to make the hoses so that the loader won't rip them off the pump when lifted but also so I don't have a huge unmaneagable mess of hose.

And working on cutting the hole in the plate and drilling and tapping the relief valve mounting holes

 

[crashz]

Looks awesome Dave! Nice work.

 

[mike0000]

Thanks for sharing Dave, I’m enjoying following along.

Mike