The Craftmans Shop > New from Old
Rebirth of a 6 Foot Flail Mower
awemawson:
So no point in procrastinating - may as well find out what other horrors are lurking waiting to trip me up :bugeye:
We have covers hiding both ends of the flail shaft with bearing housings and belts, and a cover concealing the jack shaft that drives the 90 degree gear box - lets have 'em off and have a look-see :scratch:
awemawson:
Now although the main flail shaft bearings have collapsed and lost their ball bearings, the inner race at both ends seems intact, so hopefully the actual shaft will be ok to accept another bearing - lucky as I have no idea how I'd machine a 7 foot long shaft with floppy bits sticking out :scratch:
Again they seem to be a standard RHP item albeit rather expensive at a first investigation.
A close look at the actual flail shows that someone has had a lucky escape - obviously ran over some barbed wire and it just wrapped round the flail rather than tearing the driver to shreds :bugeye:
The Jackshaft bearing and U/J's actually don't seem too bad on a brief examination.
awemawson:
So the shopping list so far:
2 metres 135 mm o/d heavy wall (3 mm minimum) tube (5-6 inch would do) - roller
2 off SFT5-MSFT2 bearings (Roller supports)
2 off SF10/65 bearings (main flail shaft)
4 off SPB1600-5V630 drive belts (may need to be a matched set)
2 metres x 300 mm x 5 mm canvass re-inforced rubber conveyor belt (Chaff guard)
Numerous nuts and bolts
Big tin of Yellow paint
Big Tin of Primer
awemawson:
A bit more 'progress' (is that the word when pulling things apart :scratch:) today. First I pulled it out of the work shop and ran over it with the steam cleaner, especially around the bearing housings and gear box where it was hard to see what was supposed to be there and what was congealed accretions :bugeye: It didn't all come off, but at least the nuts and bolts were now visible.
Brought it back inside (it's a dodgy thing to 'rig' - it swings all over the place) and removed the right hand bearing housing. The outer race was vaguely intact but cracked. and the inner race is still on the shaft and no doubt will entertain me getting it off. I could possibly get away re-using the housing with a new 'insert', but they seem to be 2/3rds of the price of the whole thing so not sure it's worth spoiling the ship for a h'pence of tar. (OK not a h'pence in this case - £120 each plus VAT - well they are 2.5" bore self aligning :bugeye: )
Then I set too slackening the belt tensioner spring arrangement to allow me to remove the four drive belts. This will let me pull the Taperlock pulleys off and get at the left hand bearing assembly.
Now the belts are off I can assess the 90 degree gear box. Negligible back lash, but the output shaft bearings are noisy. Probably worth replacing all four bearings and two oil seals while I'm in there.
awemawson:
The steel for the roller arrived today - 139.7 mm diam by 5 mm wall thickness - or in the proper units it was made in 5 1/2" o/d - good stuff this metrication :clap:
Now to buy the (just under) 2 metres that I needed as a cut length was the same price as buying the entire 7.5 metre length, so no point in not doing but for convenience I got them to cut the 2 metres off before delivery.
...so now I have a 5.5 metre 'offcut' :lol: No doubt uses will crop up over the years to come.
The full length was 124.5 kG's of steel so great fun to manoeuvre single handed.
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