showcrop
Well-known Member
For the last four years and especially this year, I have been pushing hard to get an old car that I have been working on for four years on the road. This project has pushed hay equipment repairs to the back burner. I haven't had any problems this year until last week, when my baler missed three bales out of 50, and the drive shaft that runs between the two rear wheels on my old JD 640 rake dropped a U joint. I ordered new U-joints for the rake and Friday I got the old ones out and one of the new ones in. Sat I went to work on the baler with a good weather stretch coming this week. I checked and repaired a few small things on the baler, and then checked the needles. Having no tucker fingers the needles on the MF need to be spot on and one was too far out. Getting it back in place was an ordeal. It just didn't want to adjust like it is supposed to. I worked on it for three hours Sunday afternoon before I finally got it right after probably 200 times getting under it to adjust and back up to check the position. The hips and knees were screaming with pain after that. My friend who mows for me mowed Sunday, so Monday I needed to ted it out. I had a fear of a worn part on it breaking, so I went to the parts tedder to steal one from it. I had done the other side a few years go and it had gone well. This other one gave me a two hour struggle, but I got into the field before noon. In the afternoon I put the rebuilt drive shaft into the rake, and that turned into an hour longer than expected job. Yesterday it was time to rake, and I was going to tow the rake to the field behind my truck, but when I went to unhook the drive shaft on it, the movement didn't feel right so I tore into the gearbox. I had been into it 6-8 years ago, to perform a PM, but since there is no oil drain I surmised that JD didn't expect anyone to perform maintenance on the gear box. Upon removal of the input shaft end plate water came out instead of oil! Immediately I envisioned having to borrow a rake again, and running to the bearing store 15 miles away. I brought the gear and shaft assembly in and cleaned it up good and found the bearings to be still serviceable. I got it back together and it worked well. Next spring it will get new bearings and gaskets and seals. So ultimately tedder rake and baler all worked well but it was tough compressing three years of repairs into a week.
