The idiot being me in this case 
So. . ~60 hours on my BX25D, all doing snow clearing, and then landscaping this spring, and this weekend it was time to cut my grass for the first time. I uncrated the deck, lubed it, put it on, and had at it.
Got towards the end of cutting my front yard, and was kind of "getting comfortable". . . ya know where you start feeling like you're really getting the hang of it and you get a little cocky. .
Reached down without looking to disengage the PTO coming down a steep hill before I turned around on the street to mow back up the same hill, and somehow grabbed the wrong lever and pushed forward. Realized it was the wrong lever right away, because instead of just moving a little forward to come out of the detent and then back, it kept going forward, but it was too late.
My heart sank when I realized what I had done. Motor was turning 3k, PTO engaged, and I'd moved the select lever into the position where the rear would also be driven. .
I immediately assumed the worst I disengaged the PTO, got off, looked for fluid pouring out the bottom, but didn't see anything. Tried to shift it back into mid-only, but the lever was stuck in the now forward-most position (rear only). I restarted the tractor, engaged the PTO, disengaged the PTO, and the select lever was free to move again. Moves fairly smoothly between the 3 positions, sometimes getting "stuck" in rear only, but an engage/disengage of the PTO frees it up. I believe it was actually like that originally as well (sometimes getting stuck).
I drove it back up to my garage, took the cover off the rear PTO, and engaged it. Seems to turn ok. Makes a slightly varying noise when engaged, but it doesn't seem to be loading up or sticking, and the noise isn't one that sounds like grinding. Disengaged it, turned off the tractor, and I can freely turn the rear PTO shaft by hand. Rotates smoothly. Unfortunately, I don't have any rear-PTO implements to see if it works properly under a load. My snowthrower and deck both use the mid.
I looked at the WSM, and it looks like the rear PTO is on a big gear, driven by a smaller gear on a long shaft that always engages the larger PTO gear. The long shaft engages on the other end (front of the transaxle), only when the select lever is in one of the rear positions. It's not clear on the exploded view how the actual "selecting" happens, as in what engages the front-most part of that shaft (bevel gear mesh, splined shaft or what)
Anyone else wanna guess what damage I likely did or did not do, shifting the PTO select while the PTO clutch was engaged? I can't imagine I'm the only idiot that's ever done this.
On a side-note, since I don't own any rear implements presently, I zip tied that lever into the rear-most position so I never repeat that particular idiot move again
So. . ~60 hours on my BX25D, all doing snow clearing, and then landscaping this spring, and this weekend it was time to cut my grass for the first time. I uncrated the deck, lubed it, put it on, and had at it.
Got towards the end of cutting my front yard, and was kind of "getting comfortable". . . ya know where you start feeling like you're really getting the hang of it and you get a little cocky. .
Reached down without looking to disengage the PTO coming down a steep hill before I turned around on the street to mow back up the same hill, and somehow grabbed the wrong lever and pushed forward. Realized it was the wrong lever right away, because instead of just moving a little forward to come out of the detent and then back, it kept going forward, but it was too late.
My heart sank when I realized what I had done. Motor was turning 3k, PTO engaged, and I'd moved the select lever into the position where the rear would also be driven. .
I immediately assumed the worst I disengaged the PTO, got off, looked for fluid pouring out the bottom, but didn't see anything. Tried to shift it back into mid-only, but the lever was stuck in the now forward-most position (rear only). I restarted the tractor, engaged the PTO, disengaged the PTO, and the select lever was free to move again. Moves fairly smoothly between the 3 positions, sometimes getting "stuck" in rear only, but an engage/disengage of the PTO frees it up. I believe it was actually like that originally as well (sometimes getting stuck).
I drove it back up to my garage, took the cover off the rear PTO, and engaged it. Seems to turn ok. Makes a slightly varying noise when engaged, but it doesn't seem to be loading up or sticking, and the noise isn't one that sounds like grinding. Disengaged it, turned off the tractor, and I can freely turn the rear PTO shaft by hand. Rotates smoothly. Unfortunately, I don't have any rear-PTO implements to see if it works properly under a load. My snowthrower and deck both use the mid.
I looked at the WSM, and it looks like the rear PTO is on a big gear, driven by a smaller gear on a long shaft that always engages the larger PTO gear. The long shaft engages on the other end (front of the transaxle), only when the select lever is in one of the rear positions. It's not clear on the exploded view how the actual "selecting" happens, as in what engages the front-most part of that shaft (bevel gear mesh, splined shaft or what)
Anyone else wanna guess what damage I likely did or did not do, shifting the PTO select while the PTO clutch was engaged? I can't imagine I'm the only idiot that's ever done this.
On a side-note, since I don't own any rear implements presently, I zip tied that lever into the rear-most position so I never repeat that particular idiot move again
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