All things tractors thread

Very fortunate my little tractor started right up today after a colder winter.
Hope you get yours up and running soon Bob!

Oh I got the John Deere fixed last summer, runs just fine. Except when it got real cold last month, it would not turn over after sitting a few weeks in single digits temps. I had to plug up the block heater for the first time, and after heating it up after an hour, it started right up.

I’ve been waiting weeks for it to dry out enough to get out and do some bush-hogging. Need to get a lot mowed before things (weeds and briars) start growing again. The grass is starting to green up and grow a bit already. And next month will be plowing time!

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Great news!!

Well, I got a starter Wednesday that I ordered on Sunday, but it wasn’t really the right one, so I had them ship me the right one. I was surprised it came in yesterday via UPS, so it was a pleasant surprise. I boxed up the wrong one and put a shipping label on it and gave it to the delivery man.

So, I’ll be trying to install the new one soon, hope it works out. Then I will only have 4 issues left to deal with on the truck…

As for tractoring, it’s been relatively dry the last week, so I hope to get it out tomorrow for some mowing. One area being mowed will be where the three new pluots are going. They’re supposed to be here Monday.

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Ok, not a tractor but a four-wheel related video. But, hey, it’s my thread, so…

Future Darwin Award winner…

Nice hat…

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Well, one problem has been fixed on the ole F-150. I finally got the new starter mounted, it was really hard to get my hands and tools in there, but I got the bolts tightened up. So, I reconnected the battery cables, made sure everything was where it was supposed to be, and gave the key a crank and “VROOOM!” It started right up, and better yet no other untoward sounds.

The truck had been sitting undriven for about three months, so since the tranny leaks, I had to put in about 3 quarts of fluid. That will be the next item to be repaired, but that’s not something I can do, I’ll have to bite the bullet and take it to the shop.

Now the computer is throwing me a 1633 code, which is Low Voltage Keep Memory Alive alarm. From what I’ve read, if the battery has been disconnected for a while, it takes a few start and drive cycles to help the PCM reset itself. So, I hope that’s the case here. The old code of Bank 1 and 2 running lean is gone, so maybe it’ll come back, hope not.

So, now besides the tranny issue, I’m down to just two other items that need addressed. But, at least now it’s driveable, I took it down to the general store (10 miles round trip) for some gas and it ran fine.

Thanks to all the suggestions and help. Feels good to fix something like that, even though it was a royal pain in the @$$, shoulders and back working under that truck.

After some lunch it’s out to get the tractor out and do some mowing. It’s a nice day, about 50, but there’s still a chill in the air.

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OK, finally in for the night after a busier than normal Sunday. I wanted to do some bush hogging today before I did any plowing. So, cranked up the ole JD and was going out to do some mowing. Well, after turning on the PTO, the mower engaged with a loud clang as usual. And then, another loud bang, so I looked back and the mower shaft is flopping around while also spinning, but no longer attached to the mower!

So, in a hurry I disengaged the PTO, and turned off the tractor, and jumped down to take a look. The bolt that attaches the shaft to the mower’s gearbox had snapped off. I imagine that was a shear bolt? I don’t know why it snapped, it’s not because the mower locked up because I could spin it by hand from the top. But then, I looked under the mower and saw that one half of the blade was at a right angle to the other half. I assume the halves are attached in the middle? At any rate, I don’t know how that happened, and I suppose that’s what snapped off the shear bolt. I’m just glad it didn’t fly off and hit something.

So, I had to put it back into the barn and will take a closer look at it later. Me and the wife hooked up the plow and I was able to get 4 plots done before dark.

Any ideas on what happened?

Yep. The blade being bent got it bound up and instead of breaking the gearbox it snapped the shear pin. Easy fix. New blades and an actual new shear pin. If you have the right tools it shouldn’t be too hard. Turn the deck up sideway on a tree and get the blades off. Replace. Lay it back down and just attach the new shaearbolt where the old one was. Make sure nothing is hitting underneath with the new blades first.

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The blades underneath pivot and will often be 90 degrees from each other when it is not running. Some pto’s with electric engagement can be very hard starting and snap shear pins when engaging. When engaging the pto, make sure the 3 point hitch is up and the throttle is low. Once it engages, raise the throttle to the pto 540 rpm. If it’s a half inch hole, the shear pin should be just a grade 2 bolt. It’s a good idea to keep a few on hand.

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Thanks for the suggestions. I had just came out of the barn when I engaged the PTO, and it was up off the ground. But, the throttle may have been up a bit, but I was sitting there just idling.

My guess is that the bush hog is an older model, don’t even know what brand, and the bolt was maybe a bit rusty. The mower was here for years when we moved here 4 years ago.

It would be nice to get a new one, but we’ll have to make due with this one. The blades probably need to be sharpened anyways, so this will be something I’ll do later.

It’s always something, last year the water pump bearing gave out, that caused the fan to impale itself in the radiator. You can see that further up this thread. Had to remove and replace all that, thankfully it was something I could do myself.

If it is a grade 2 bolt, what do those usually cost, maybe a few bucks?

Grade 2 is just common bolts . Grade five has 3 lines or marks on the head . They are harder usually grade 5 is a tinted brassy color . Grade 2 silver color .

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Maybe less…

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Around me where hardware is sold by the pound, they are very cheap. DO NOT use a 1/2" grade 5 or grade 8 bolt. Much better to shear a bolt than to break part of the PTO drive line. Rotary mowers generally don’t get sharpened unless you are using them to cut grass and want a neater look. The blunt edge shatters the stem on brush and small trees so they don’t resprout.
Older units are often better than some of the newer ones. The brush being cut certainly doesn’t care what the cutter looks like. :slight_smile: If it works, use it.

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Our PTO driven wood chipper will shear the pin if you engage the PTO above idle. You learn in a hurry to keep the rpms down when starting up. Tractor Supply will have grade 2 bolts for cheap. Get yourself a bag of them.

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Took a pic of the busted bolt-

Here’s a pic of my scoured clean double bottom. After a few passes in the turf it looks like new, sort of. And here in the barn it will sit for another year…

Nice Dearborn! Is that a 12", 14" or 16"? Mine is a 12" (10-152) so I can’t get parts for it. I’m having a hard time getting it set up right, it won’t roll over the sod/soil. I’ve watched what I can find on YouTube and set it up according to what they show, but no luck. We just bought a '68 Ford 5000 and it came with a two-bottom John Deere plow that I hope to rehab and get better results with.

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Thanks. Yes, it’s a Dearborn, the model number is a 10-156, I think it’s a 14in. I got it two years ago, right after I got the John Deere. When we got here on the farm four years ago, there was already this bush hog, and a disk harrow, but no plow. So, I got to looking on Craigslist, and found it at a used farm equipment place about 40 miles from here. They wanted about $300, but it think I paid $250. I think that was a fair price, considering how hard they are to find in that condition.

I was a tractor noob, so I knew nothing about them, thankfully my bro in law does, and passed along a lot of good info, and helped me out. But, I had to learn how to set up the plow myself through a lot of internet videos and articles.

We have about a 3 acre pasture that isn’t used for anything, but it’s cleared off, so I used it as a training ground. It took a lot of trial and error, and I did a few plowing runs until I felt confident enough to do it for our garden plots.

It is tricky, you have to manipulate the top link, and the right lift arm lever to get it where you want it. I set mine up by getting on level ground, and lower the plow down to the ground. I want the tips of both boards or shares, whatever they’re called, touching the ground at the same time, at a very slight angle. That is, I want the tips touching before the back of the share, maybe an inch or two lower than the back of the share.

Usually I do this by sitting the plow down on the ground and adjusting the link arm, and then lifting it back up until the tips look level. To get the share angle right, I pull in the top link by giving it a few turns. The shorter top link will pull the plow towards the tractor, and should give you the proper angle. I’m now ready to do my first run.

Depending on the slope of the hill, I want to throw the turned soil up the hill. I always plow across the hill, not up and down. If I’m sitting in my tractor, and the hill is sloping from right to left, I want to make my first run on the right side of my proposed plot. A key to getting the sod turned over, is to get up enough speed. I tried to do my runs at about 4mph, which for me was in low 4th gear.

After the first run, you drive your right tires into the newly cut furrow, and you’ll notice your plow is no longer level with the ground, because your right side is down in the furrow. So you have to get out, and readjust the right link, usually to pull it up to make both share tips level with the ground again.

After the readjustment, you’re ready to make the rest of your runs, while in that furrow. If you have multiple plots to do, I do the first run on the right side of each plot, then do my in-furrow adjustment, and finish the plot, and move on to the next plot. It sounds a bit complicated, but after a while it becomes easier. It’s still a bit of an art too, so some folks may do it a bit differently.

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One other thing on the shear bolts. Sometimes they get old and just shear easily. They are soft metal so they wear a bit under normal use and eventually get a little weak.

The biggest problem with shear bolts is that sometimes the shaft will rust on the gear box and then the shear bolt won’t shear properly, and instead break the box.

That said, those gear boxes are pretty tough, if it’s a decent mower. Plus if it has a stump jumper underneath (as it sounds like yours does) the blades will just bounce off big rocks and stumps.

I once had someone bush hogging for me and they hit an 6" steel well casing. The wall thickness was about 1/4" steel. It made a heck of a racket when it hit and nearly “mowed” the well casing off. The mower made a little bit of bearing noise after that, but it was used for years and years after that, and I think still in use today. That was a “Bush Hog” brand, which is a pretty tough mower.

There is some risk of tearing the PTO gears out of a tractor, if the pin doesn’t shear (but generally only on little cheap tractors, which yours isn’t) but it’s always a good idea to put some anti-seize on the shaft when you put the shear bolt back in.

As Jem mentioned, use a common grade #2 bolt. Both grade 2 and grade 5 are generally zinc coated and look silver, so the only way you can tell which is which is from the marks on the head (grade 2 will have no marks, grade 5 will have 3 marks). Grade 8 bolts have 6 marks and are usually brass colored.

The brass coloring on grade 8 bolts is actually a zinc coating. It’s a better zinc coating than the silver looking zinc coating on grade 2 and grade 5 bolts.

Sometimes it’s hard to find grade 2 bolts in some hardware stores. In that case I have used tap bolts, which are normally grade 2. I don’t like using tap bolts though, because they are actually a little too weak. Since they are threaded all the way to the head, the average diameter is a little smaller than a regular bolt, hence weaker.

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