Hi everyone, new to the forum, Last fall I purchased a 7100D with loader, grader blade, b2551 snow blower, and a heritage RDC54 by woods mower. It also came with a k-420 tiller that he said was basically scrap metal. I looked into the tiller a little more in depth once I got it home. The guy didn’t seem very knowledgeable of tractors and working on them. After looking into it I found the guy kept snapping shear pins, and decided to weld the tiller shaft to the output shaft. That didn’t hold for him, so I started tearing it apart. I found the output shaft had snapped at the first shear pin hole. I’ve searched all over the internet for anything on the k-420 and have come up with the manual and parts list that I already had, and I have decided to start fabricating a new output shaft and the first 8” of the tiller shaft. This is my progress so far.
K-420 tiller
- Thread starter Jjhesse
- Start date
The blades aren’t bad, and the whole tiller itself isn’t in bad shape. Unfortunately the previous owner I’m assuming kept dumping the clutch at full throttle with the tiller in the ground.
Yeah, I was taught and am used to have the tiller blades spinning just above the ground. Then drop them into the ground slowly, adding throttle. Stay off of the forward movement, manual or hydrostatic, until the tiller is busting soil and there is no engine lug.
It worked well for me for decades.
Over the years, many years, I've blown through tiller blades like a chain smoker goes through packs of cigarettes. Shear bolts too. But blade life and shear bolts was all about rocks, clay, and caliche.
Never had a tiller failure, whether it be driveline, chain or gear drive. It's regular greasing, minor adjusting, shear bolts and blades. Used commercially.
Your blades are old and maybe rusty, but NEW. The blades on your 'scrap' unit are like new. With some mild - rock impact hits, evident.
We'd run tiller blades down to where they looked like a pointed sickle and 1/2 the original length. Your blades are like new in regard to shape and size.
Fix the driveline and enjoy.
Seems like the previous owner didn't know what he was doing.
From one Cheesehead to another. Go Packers.
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After a few long weeks, and major headaches, I have finally finished the tiller. I changed my mind with how I was going to rebuild this so many times, and decided to do the shaft rebuild the right way. I took the old output shaft to a friend with a lathe to cut the old sprocket off of the shaft. I then decided instead of splicing the tiller shaft that I would just build a whole new tiller shaft. Ordered a new 1 3/4”x 1/4” wall pipe, and my gave my dad one of the square brackets I cut off that the tines bolt to, so he could take to work and cut out new ones with the water jet. Once I got those, I welded them all up spaced the same way and distance apart as the old one. I had one hell of a time getting the carrier hub out of the old tiller shaft. I ended up having to torch the old pipe off of the carrier hub and shaft. I then got new oil seals and bearings for both the drive case and carrier hub. Got everything marked up and drilled for the shear bolts. I decided to paint the new shaft and tines even though I know it will wear off right away, but I think it’s more of a pride in your work thing for me. Today I got all the new bearings and seals in the drive side and started assembling. Ended up measuring wrong and had to drill a new hole through output shaft. Got it all assembled and tested it, and everything works great. Here are some pictures of the process, and I did this all custom, and as cheap as I could. I spent roughly $200-$300 between metal seals bearings and oil
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North Idaho Wolfman
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No, it digs in quite well, that was the first pass and wanted to test it a little more gently. I eventually set it all the way down and it did great. The ground was also rock hard and full of rock and apparently logs. It does bounce really bad when it hits a rock, but I haven’t used a tiller that doesn’t.