The downside of a tilting seat

woodlandfarms · Apr 20, 2014

So thing got very interesting this evening. I am out mowing and randomly the fuse pops. I reset and 10 minutes later it pops again. Repeat a few more times and back to the barn. All wiring looks good. Then I remember the random tilting seat. Off comes the merc switch panel. It's ugly but not the issue. But that wires is tight so off comes the panel over the tunnel. Turns it the wire is hung up a bit on the fire hose cover that protects the hoses. Further inspection the covering is worn off and wires are bare. In a perfect world I would pull new wire but I have none so I am going to splice the wires in the morning.

SpringHollow · Apr 21, 2014

Hi Carl,

I just had a thought (happens every ten years or so whether I want it to or not). The angle of the mercury switches would affect the sensitivity of the circuit. You want the angle of one to be a mirror of the other but I would think playing with the angle of both while keeping them identical would change how far the seat has to tilt before you get a response. I remember I had to adjust mine in the beginning to keep the seat level because the angles were different on one versus the other.

Ken

woodlandfarms · Apr 21, 2014

I will dbl check in the am

SpringHollow · Jun 15, 2014

Hi Carl,

The PT people can be pretty smart on how to do things simply. There is a flow restrictor in the tilt seat hydraulic circuit that dampens the response time of the tilt system. Very simple compared to having a fancy electronic circuit to add delay. If you really wanted to speed up your tilt response, you could go to a restrictor with a larger flow.

Ken

MikeOConnor · Aug 30, 2014

I'm searching old threads and came across this one. Does everybody already know Terry's "bleed the seat cylinder" trick? Very early on I was getting dumped out of my seat all the time. Called Terry and he taught me how to bleed air out of the cylinder, which cured my problem then and has worked several times since them. Here's a description, just in case this is new.

1) disconnect the cylinder from the seat (just remove the top bolt, you can leave it connected at the bottom)
2) lay the cylinder on the floor of the cab and (important!) make sure that the hose connectors are on the top (so the air bubble can rise out of the cylinder).
3) run the tractor and cycle the seat from one side to the other so that the cylinder goes through its complete range - do this several times

It feels a little weird to sit on the seat 'cause it's all floppy, but you can practice that before you start the tractor. You don't need to tilt the seat to complete extremes, just enough for the mercury switch to close.

I wind up doing this once every 2-3 years -- the clue is when it dumps me. The last time I did this, I noticed that the cylinder was cycling really slow (which meant that the seat wasn't as snappy when I'd reverse direction on a hill). That was fixed when I replaced my draft-control valve (or maybe when I accidentally bled the draft-control circuit).

cqaigy2 · Aug 30, 2014

Nice write up, thanks for sharing!

woodlandfarms · Aug 31, 2014

Cool!

marrt · Aug 31, 2014

I'm surprised you guys are still fooling with the tilt seat. I ordered a seat weldment for the 1430 and removed mine right away. I never liked the tilting seat arrangement. Then again, I'm not putting my tractor on super steep slopes ether. My opinion might change in that circumstance.

SpringHollow · Aug 31, 2014

The tilting seat is great - I definitely would not want to get rid of it. The factory seat itself is terrible and I replaced that with a low profile suspension seat.

Ken