Front Drive Shaft falling off on BX2200

[DougA]

I've had this happen twice now. The front drive shaft Part #K2561-16830 has a pin in one end and not the other, at least on mine and according to Kubota parts schematic. The one end has come off twice, even though it is a bit of a pain to get back on, even without the pin in. It seems almost impossible to have it fall off but it does. I tried drilling a hole through the Ujoint (easy) and then through the shaft to put a pin in both ends but drilling through the shaft is next to impossible - for me at least.
I'm assuming that the shaft needs a bit of play during operation, so I'm not sure putting a pin in it is a good idea but I'm stuck for any other solution.
I checked as best I can to see if someone prior to me had substituted the wrong shaft but everything appears correct.
With snow coming, I'm going to need the 4 wheel drive.
Stumped - suggestions???

 

[284 International]

Does the pin do anything except retain the driveshaft? Does it transmit torque? I'm assuming it's a roll pin; what if you replace the roll pin and then safety wire it into place? That would effectively end any chance of the pin coming out or loose, but still be positively secured, and need scarcely any more room.

You could also use a bolt, probably with a nyloc nut and some Loctite or equivalent, but that's sometimes tricky, since there may not be enough clearance for the bolt head and nut, plus the additional length of the bolt shank.

Having said that, there is something amiss that it has happened twice. Are you using a metric pin, or a standard?

 

[DougA]

Thanks for the reply. The UJoint is locked on one end with a bolt which replaced the Kubota pin and cotter pin. It's the other end of the UJoint that is coming off. The parts schematic shows that there is nothing holding the shaft to the UJoint on that end. Very strange.

I set the shaft back in again and we'll see what happens. Perhaps it was just a fluke. I have some very rough terrain that I drive the Kubota on and I regularly have pins and bolts pop off but this is a bit troubling.

 

[284 International]

Does the driveshaft telescope or slide in and out of the joint or splines at all? Perhaps a spring is supposed to go in, to tension it somehow. Several of my machines have configurations of that sort, one way or another.

 

[sandskar1]

Hi!
I have very limited experince of tractors (just started fixing up an old B6100D) so You have to take my advice for what it is worth. For most other machines however it must be possible for one of the yokes to slide on the splines if not you will get all the force from any movement of the frontaxle to hit the bearings in the gearbox. BAD!!!! (guess from your description that it is the joint between the driveshaft from the gearbox and the pinion axle from the front axle that you are talking about) The sliding on the splines should be there. The real problem (not the symptom) is that there is to much movement back/forth of the front axel or (but not likely) of the driveshaft from the gear box. My humble suggestion is that you check how "loose" the frontaxle is on the pivot pin. Check for backward forward motion.
good luck

 

[sandskar1]

Hi me again!
I just like to add to my previous post. Is the sliding yoke longer than the fixed one? On my B6100 the sliding part is ~3times as long as the fixed one. If somebody tampered with the joint and replaced the yoke with a shorter one that may be your problem. I do not have the parts list for the BX2200 so I do not know if they are supposed to be the same length or not.
good luck

 

[hodge]

You might want to just give the front end a good once-over- if the shaft is tough to get back into place, it would have to be just as tough to get it to fall off. Perhaps you have something/things loose on the front axle, allowing it to move or drop more than it should when you are going over the rough terrain. When it does move more than it's engineered to do, it could give that extra amount of room for the joint to come off.
When the tractor is sitting still, static, you wouldn't be able to tell if something is loose, other than visual clues. You could jack the front end up, looking for movement as the weight is taken off of the axle.