Bush Hog.. And what a pretty Hog she will be.

[ieezitin]

Hello guys

Well! My last hog blew up and was unsalvageable and returned back to mother earth from where she once came from so I have 8 acres to mow and I need a new hog. I perused the net for a new one and was astonished at the prices and figured I would rather poke my eye with a stick ten times than buy new  one so off to the auction I when and I came home with two.

One is a real Bush Hog which is a quality machine and the other is a Chinese knock off.  I checked what used prices were going on Craigslist and I figured if I buy the two rebuild both and sell the Chinese knock off I would come out of the deal with a Bush Hog that I have spent no money on. So here is what we have. So i started with the Chinese heap.








Here is the right-angled gear drive which has been sprayed battleship grey but will be another colour

 

Here is the undercarriage with the blades. For those of you who do not know these blades are held on by bolts and a slight gap is left between the fit. The reason is when the blade hits a stump or brick it articulates and swings back for where it absorbs the shock and does not transfer the power through the drive train.

 





Here is the PTO Drive shaft that connects to the tractor, this blighter was fused together so i had to weld it to the table and spray Kroil on it connect it to a 2 Ton comealong take up tension and smack it with a mallet to loosen.

 




This is the new base plate that will seat the Right -Angled gear drive. i used a bit of 10" c_Channel trimmed down the height punched 4 holes in and cut the flange hole in with a cutting torch.

 









This is the tractor that will be pushing it. It is a Case 385 50Hp  3 cylinder diesel made in England, its cost me a pretty penny over the years in parts as the Brits make them duel coded meaning half metric and half imperial, i cant even make the stuff easily in my machine shop because dies etc are hard to come by here in the US.

 







Well thats it for now gotta have it ready soon as we have just had a drenching rain and the grass growing will keep me up at night.

More Later      Anthony

[t20]

Hi  ieezitin
Nice tractor great idea i look forward to seeing more pics
mike

[MadNick]

Hi there,

This is the tractor that will be pushing it. It is a Case 385 50Hp  3 cylinder diesel made in England, its cost me a pretty penny over the years in parts as the Brits make them duel coded meaning half metric and half imperial, i cant even make the stuff easily in my machine shop because dies etc are hard to come by here in the US.

I have heard this from a few different people. Which type of tooling is difficult to get hold over there?

Nick

[ieezitin]

Nick.

there is no such thing as BA or Whitworth here. the Americans do work in fractions and metric is not common here but the Americans work to there own standard. No4 No6 No8 are small size bolts or screws but mean nothing to you Europeans.  the thread angle is different 60Deg verses 55 deg. the only standard is metric through out the world. its a mess. this country will not adopt metric.

Anthony.

[MadNick]

Hi there,

Its a similar mixture of regimes over here but it does seem quite easy to get hold of tools to cut obscure threads.

I would be more than happy to hunt out some BA and Whitworth tooling for you and send it over, you see this stuff going for nothing at car boots sales and the like.

Nick

[Noitoen]

Here in Portugal, those hogs have heavy duty chains instead of blades. Also they have a projection curtain protection made out of pieces of chain in the front and back.
http://www.joper.com.pt/produto.php?idioma=_eng&tipoproduto=5&id_produto=5

[ieezitin]

Nick

I thank you for the offer its too kind. If ever I would need stuff I always thought of posting on here and someone would help over there its been done before.

Noitoen.

We have that type here too but there not to common. I do not know what type is better than the other I have always used this type.

Well!! It been quite a week and I have managed to accomplish quite a lot. Here is the gear drive mounted on the channel.






The whole bed area where the drive sits has corroded so bad I needed to patch quite allot of the area. I would have patched it all but do not have enough plate to do so and this project is on a budget so my wife tells me and she is the boss.











Now back to beating on the eastern made products. What on earth possessed them to think a cheesy piece if badly bent flat bar acting as a strong back would work and do the job of stopping the flexing of the mower while its chomping down on sticks and stumps astounds me!, so I slapped some angle iron on to stiffen it up.









The linkage point where the whole of the weight is pivoted on the draw bar of the tractor was duff too, I needed to support both bottom points with angle so it does not twist.




AAAAAAAAAAAAAAahhhhhhhhhh  now it’s the end of the day. Work is good for the soul its time to sit back and admire my labour with a cocktail of choice to clean my throat of all the nickel and zinc fumes I ingested while toiling away on my mower.  Will have her finished soon.   Anthony

[ieezitin]

Well…..  I got the base plate on and tacked it up then I installed the right angled drive on to see the fit.





I threw on the blade assembly and installed the nut then tightened it up and found that when I span it round the top of the pin-bolts that hold the blades on rubbed the new plate I welded on, in fact the whole round pan is warped which I never noticed so now I have a dilemma these nuts are so badly corroded I would never stand a chance to unscrew them . soo…….. i cut the tops off and ground them flat then welded them all up.









Once I got to this stage I noticed the front end was bent and racked so reluctantly I tore into it and this is what I ended up with.






















Now it was time to upright the mower and fully weld everything as it is pretty awkward welding up-hill all the time.








Finished all the main welding I added some little touches to it one was putting a back stop for the gear-drive so it will not move or rack, I had more play in the holes I drilled so I wanted to play it safe.







Now finally its finished. I slapped the drive shaft on and fired her up and cropped some grass.














All done. Now all I have to do is the next one and get my cash back.

Thanks for looking.           Anthony.