What did you do to or on your Kubota today?

[Russell King]

…
So back to figuring out the noise. I ran the mower with the belts off and was able to determine that the noise was either coming from the gear box or the main pulley bearing, which is a sealed bearing. That bearing is kind of odd since it's not pressed onto the pulley spacer that goes inside it. To be honest, it kind of acts like a spacer as far as I can tell, or on second thoughts it supports the output shaft and reduces the bending moment. Anyway, I pressed out the old bearing and installed a new one that GWTC shipped to me at no charge. …

The bearings don’t really need to fit tightly on the shaft or into the housing. If you’re interested you can look into SKF and find out what fits the recommended fits can be. If the fit is too tight the bearing internal clearance can be changed and then the bearing will get hot and eventually enlarge itself enough that it destroys itself.

The friction force on the races is great enough to overcome the internal friction of the rolling balls and races especially in the horizontal shaft position where gravity helps.

I assume that Del Moreno used high quality bearings but you should inspect the one you removed to find out the bearing designation and you can buy a high quality bearin if they happened to cut out the cost with cheaper bearings.

Sometimes the seals get damaged or tweaked and can make quite a bit of noise.

 

[mcmxi]

The bearings don’t really need to fit tightly on the shaft or into the housing. If you’re interested you can look into SKF and find out what fits the recommended fits can be. If the fit is too tight the bearing internal clearance can be changed and then the bearing will get hot and eventually enlarge itself enough that it destroys itself.

The friction force on the races is great enough to overcome the internal friction of the rolling balls and races especially in the horizontal shaft position where gravity helps.

I assume that Del Moreno used high quality bearings but you should inspect the one you removed to find out the bearing designation and you can buy a high quality bearin if they happened to cut out the cost with cheaper bearings.

Sometimes the seals get damaged or tweaked and can make quite a bit of noise.

Here's the bearing that I removed.

And here's the bearing that I installed.

 

[Russell King]

Old is LDI (Italian)

Quality/Rohs

ldi-bearings.com

New is SKF (Swedish and worldwide)

I know nothing of the LDI bearings but would assume they are high quality.

 

[fc1]

Biiiig burn today; rained in the am so zero danger...

 

[mcmxi]

Old is LDI (Italian)

Quality/Rohs

ldi-bearings.com

New is SKF (Swedish and worldwide)

I know nothing of the LDI bearings but would assume they are high quality.

I have 50 hours or so on this flail and I sure hope that swapping out that bearing isn't something I need/have to do with that kind of frequency. Maybe I overtightened the belts last summer and that put more stress on that upper bearing. Del Morino doesn't provide any information on how tight the belts should be.

On the bright side, it's not a difficult job to change out the bearing, just takes some time to remove a couple of guards, the belts and the pulley.

 

[ctfjr]

. . .
I cleaned up the edges of all 24 hammers, . . .

mcmxii how did you go about cleaning up the edges?

 

[mcmxi]

mcmxii how did you go about cleaning up the edges?

I rotate the cutting head 90 degrees so that it's vertical, then use a 4-1/2" angle grinder with an abrasive disc to dress up the cutting edges. The drum is very easy to rotate and it takes all of 5 minutes to clean up the 24 hammer blades.

If a hammer is in bad enough shape, I run a bead of 7018 along the cutting edge and grind it to shape. Here's one that I fixed up after a "friend" borrowed the flail. The last photo shows the final shaping stage, and come to think of it, I would have to look closely at the hammers to figure out which ones have been repaired.

After looking for hammers on line and seeing that they're expensive, I designed (in SolidWorks) what I hoped would be a cheaper and better hammer with the idea that I could sell them. But with steel prices being what they are I decided that they'd be no money in it.

If there's a downside to a flail over a rotary cutter it might be the cost of the blades. The cheapest I've found online are $21 each so around $500 for 24 of them. Of course, there's no need to change all 24 at once and I'll continue to weld and shape as necessary which is pennies on the dollar. To avoid any balancing issues, it's not hard to weigh a known good hammer and add/remove material to get the weight right on a repaired one.

 

[ctfjr]

I rotate the cutting head 90 degrees so that it's vertical, then use a 4-1/2" angle grinder with an abrasive disc to dress up the cutting edges. The drum is very easy to rotate and it takes all of 5 minutes to clean up the 24 hammer blades.

Excellent!

 

[S-G-R]

Watered 121 trees and need a refill.

 

[g_man]

Had to move a big old pasture spruce blow-down that was across a trail.

t first I thought it was hung on another tree. But once I cut in under it I could see that it was not hung up on anything. It was propped up and spiked into the ground by all the underneath branches. I cut enough of them so that when I pulled with the winch the tree collapsed to the ground. I needed two chokers to get around it.

From here it was a grapple job to open the road. Moved what I had to into the woods.

First the double top and the top of another small dead tree caught in the mess.

Then a couple bites like this.

And finally a couple loads of debris.

Glad I don't have to detour anymore.

gg

 

[mcmxi]

Watered 121 trees and need a refill.

View attachment 129287

Cattle love dandelions!

 

[2001TLB]

Well done to Del Morino for making the pulley in such a way that the bolts that clamp it to the output shaft can be used to press if off the shaft. The pulley is secured to the shaft using a conical collar that tightens around the output shaft as the bolts are tightened.

That is the same system that my Seppi mower uses. The parts manual calls it a "Viblock". Definitely a good system. I needed to remove the gearbox to get all the contaminated gear oil out. I had never seen a viblock fitting and was kind of dreading how it was going to come apart, but it turned out to be pretty uneventful.

Doug

 

[g_man]

Cattle love dandelions!

I remember many moons ago when we used to go down the road and dipper our milk out of the neighbor's milk cooler. In the spring when his pasture was more yellow than green the fresh milk would have a definite yellow hue to it.

gg

 

[BonnySlope]

I completed my small Howard HR12 Tiller test plot. This is the day after. A little mucky as I started to get into field during turn around. This Howard HR12 is a Reverse rotation gear drive rotavator, with two passes it fluffed up fairly well and deep. With documented debit being moved to end of run with a RR tiller. Set depth skids down two positions from its highest The BX pulled well 5-6 inches plus, at one time on second pass raised loader to see corner marker I set out, a little wheel spin, lowered all good.
As you can see new at tilling or limited and trying to stay in the confines of solid soil without getting to far into wet field. Looking at my neighbors half acre which'll give me more time behind wheel and pick up the pace a little.

 

[2001TLB]

A nice day for burning here in western Washington. Todays burn is a relatively small pile I wanted to get cleaned up before summer.

 

[S-G-R]

Cattle love dandelions!

I wish wife might put me in the freezer.

 

[S-G-R]

Had some loose soil I dumped a few days ago
i ran the tiller through it and made a big dust storm. The tiller hardly could scratch the surface of anything with grass. Weather guesser predicts rain tomorrow. For april/may we typically get 6" of rain. So far they say we averaged 1.5" but we didn't even get .5" where I'm at.

 

[Magicman]

I had to remove a couple of Oak trees which gave me an opportunity to get some needed bridge lumber, etc.

This Red Oak had some rot so I had to buck a couple of firewood rounds off to get to good wood.

This is a nice Post Oak.

Skidding er out.

Three of the 5 logs are out to the sawmill. I will probably skid the other two out before I start sawing.

 

[Mitjam]

Just tilling up some ground for a garden. Hope we are past nights below freezing.

 

[g_man]

I had to remove a couple of Oak trees which gave me an opportunity to get some needed bridge lumber, etc.
View attachment 129417
This Red Oak had some rot so I had to buck a couple of firewood rounds off to get to good wood.

View attachment 129418
This is a nice Post Oak.

View attachment 129419
Skidding er out.

View attachment 129420
Three of the 5 logs are out to the sawmill. I will probably skid the other two out before I start sawing.

Nice logs magic. What are you going to build for a bridge ?

gg