Anonymous-0
Well-known Member
Last fall I was reading the classified adds and saw a 5' finish mower for sale. Asking 75.00 for it. I called and he still had it. The thing looked rough and he said he had problems keeping a shear pin where the pto shaft joins the gearbox. After hearing that I offered him 50.00 and he said take it away. I hooked it up last week to see what I had thinking I may have wasted 50 bucks. He was right. 50 feet in tall grass and the shear pin snapped. I put in another very hard bolt and 20 minutes later, it snapped. I started looking around the shop for something hard that might not shear and found a big broken hay tedder tooth exactly the size of that shear pin so I made one. 3 hours later after beating that thing through unlevel ground, big sticks, occassional rocks, and who knows what, I am still mowing. But, the thing seems to be making a racket under the gear box. I suspected bad bearings somewhere so I took all the shields off the check it out. All bearings looked as good as new. The problem was where a double 15" pulley goes on the vertical shaft of the gearbox. It was flopping around on the shaft. I pulled it off and there was a 1/4 inch pin stuck through a 1/2 in. hole in the shaft where someone had done a quick fix at some point. I found that the correct pin was a wierd shaped thing that was 5/8 inch half way and then narrowed down to a 3/8 inch to pass through the shaft. I remembered my special drawer in the shop which is labeled "odd shaped bolts". I scratched around in the drawer and found one that I thought might fit. Bingo, it fit in that odd hole like it was made for it. Now ain't that a piece of luck. While I am at it,tomorrow, I am going to paint this old machine. I think I may have something here.
