IH 444 PTO lever

[INCase]

Hello,

when we bought my wife's grandfathers tractor the PTO shift lever was cobbled up. from what i can tell, basically someone (hired mechanic i'm sure) clamped a plate to the shaft with a u-bolt and welded the lever to the plate. the weld broke yesterday while testing the new brush hog. luckily that lever is really easy to move so i just grabbed the plate and put it in gear.

I've seen 2 or 3 different levers for that tractor. it is a 1968. i have a picture of what i have, if i can find it, i'll post it.

questions:
1, what lever is supposed to be on it? was their more than 1 type of PTO setup for those tractors? this one has the 2 stage clucth pedal. all the way down is PTO, most of the way down is transmission.

2, i see some include the shaft, how hard is it to change the whole shaft and lever assembly (how most appear online as 1 unit). Do you have to take the top cover off the transmission?

THanks.

 

[JimB2]

Hi, see photo below.
Re PTO levers, the early tractors had a short lever, later ones had a longer lever and some even had a plastic knob on the end of the lever.
Re changing shaft, the lever assembly is held in place with the 3 bolts in item #3 and the whole assembly should come out but before removing mark the position of the handle to make it easier to install.
Handle and shaft, Item #1 is held in place by a roll pin in item #4. The difficult part is re-installing the assembly as the pin in item #4 has to go in the groove in item #5, so if you are very lucky with your toes crossed, etc it may go in first time.

The cause of the broken PTO handle is probably the previous Operator not holding clutch pedal all the way to the foot rest while trying to engage the PTO or the clutch pedal is out of adjustment or the PTO clutch requires adjusting. The other thing that happens on a tractor that the PTO is not used frequently is the PTO clutch will rust/stick to flywheel and not release when clutch is depressed.
If your PTO does not go into gear easily and you hear gear chatting DO NOT FORCE it or you will shear of the roll pin in item #4, quick solution is to shut off engine and engage PTO and restart engine while holding clutch pedal all the way to the foot rest. You must investigate the cause of PTO not engaging easily. I have help an owner that bought a used tractor like yours and sometime in it's past life the foot rest had got bent upwards not allowing full travel of the clutch pedal.

Post back if you require additional help.

 

[INCase]

thanks for the feedback

i do gingerly engage the PTO it chatters a bit but i just keep the clutch in until it coasts down and then engage. but being 54 years old (I was wrong before its a 1969 model) who knows how its been used. My wife's grandfather bought it new but was not a mechanic and when he had stuff fixed seems like it was either someone that was not knowledgeable or just plum the cheapest around or some combination thereof since the 2 can go hand in hand.

the picture is of the lever. as i mentioned someone modified/repaired it by welding the handle to a plate and then used Ubolt to attach the lever to the shaft. it works but i wonder if the Ubolt is in the right spot as sometimes the PTO jumps out of gear so i wonder if its fully engaged if the handle is not in the right clock position to the shaft. Luckily its pretty easy to move the lever so i can just grab the U-bolt threads and engage it since the weld broke.

my lever is the one with the dog leg and a plastic knob on the top.

 

[JimB2]

Hi, see attached photo of 384 or 444 with the long PTO lever with the plastic knob on top.
See the GREEN lever latching holes in the diff case.
IIRC when engaging the PTO you could push the PTO lever about 0.5 inch beyond the engaged hole, but I don't recall there being any specs in a manual setting the PTO lever as it was a lever into a solid shaft.
The other thing that can cause jumping out of PTO engagement is worn splines on the end of PTO shaft.

See link to the Canadian Redneck youtube channel, he has a recent video on adjusting PTO clutch, several years ago he did several videos on IH 444 including examining the PTO shaft for wear.

RED Neck Videos