Maybe this should be titled, "Adventures in tractor ownership". I'm new to the tractor world so please excuse the stupid n00b questions. I purchased 9 acres last month and the seller threw in a Yanmar 186 tractor. It is a 3 cylinder 18 hp diesel compact tractor made for the American market in the '80s. It has 580 hours on it (or is it 1580? or 2580? ...) The day before yesterday I was out clearing some brush with the hog. In places, this stuff is THICK and HIGH. Impossible to walk through without a machete and even if you managed to get through it you'd have a serious case of the itches due to the poison ivy. So there I was moving along in 1st gear with the transfer in HIGH. I'm guessing I was going about 5 - 7 mph. Well, it turns out that right in the middle of one of these patches is a stump about 18 inches high, totally camouflaged by all the vines and such. My left front tire hits it dead center and rather than just stop the tractor the tractor decides to climb the stump. Tractor starts tipping over so I bail. I have no intentions of being anywhere near that sucker when it is not upright. Once the tractor and I both come to a stop the tractor is on it's right side. The bush hog is also on it's side. The tractor is still running spitting oil out of a hose that I never even noticed before that is next to the filter. The only way for me to shut it down was to reach under it and shut off the pitcock valve. It probably ran about 5 minutes on it's side before I was able to shut her down. A come-along and some 3/16 inch cable attached to the nearest tree did the trick of uprighting the tractor. Time to assess the damage. Believe it or not the damage seems to be very minor. After putting oil and fuel back in she cranked right up. I'm guessing that the pins in the CV joint at the PTO are shear pins and designed to snap? Because one of them did. Also, the exhaust was bent in a bit which made it difficult to raise the hood of the tractor. Again the come-along and a tree solved that problem. My questions are this... What not so obvious thing might have gone wrong that I should be looking for? Anything? Other than replacing the oil should I check for other damage? Are those indeed shear pins and how hard are they to replace? Was I going too fast considering the fact that I'm unfamiliar with the property? What is that hose that was spitting oil out? Again, sorry for the dumb questions. Michael
Mutiple lessons learned and glad to hear your fine and the tractor too. I could probably add something useful but I think you have plenty to think about as it is . The tractor will probably be fine may break up dirt in the fuel system but you never know. I would let it run and keep an eye on things and GET BACK TO WORK. mikell
The hose is likely a valve cover breather. Check all fluid levels in the tranny, rad, power steering and anything else that has fluid in it. Your bush hog has a CV joint not a standard U joint? I wish I could see it but a shear pin is almost always a bolt, and on a PTO there is usually two plates that have a bolt keeping them spinning together unless it shears. If you're not sure get it to someone who can tell you for sure. Other than checking for leaks as it's running the little tractor is likely fine. My Bro tipped one (A White MFWD loader tractor ) years ago, and it was OK.
Glad you're OK. You made one of the most common and deadly mistakes on a tractor. Bush hogging grown up unfamiliar land is very dangerous. Bush hogging familiar land too fast is also dangerous. Do your beat to walk the area first and note or mark obstacles. The pins you broke sound like they are shear pins. Be sure to replace them with grade 2 bolts or bolts rated as the correct shear pins or you might learn another lesson. Hose sounds like it was a breather as someone said. Be sure to check all fluids and also check for dirt getting into wrong places.
Just a statement of fact here, nothing more: you were going way to fast in unfamiliar surroundings. Either walk the area first & check every clump & tuft of matierial - most are hidinig a rock, stump, gulley, or old iron - or drive very slowly. Glad you are ok, & basically the tractor is too. Could have been a bad deal. Your tractor ran 5 minutes without fresh oil in the oil pump. This probably did some wear to it. Not the end of the world, but tractors often need an engine rebuild about every 5000 hours (some only last 2000, some go 12,000 - 5000 is kind of an average....). You might have used up 500-700 hours worth there in that 5 minutes...... Engines have a breather tube in the crankcase keep pressure from forming inside the crankcase, allow vapors to exit. as others say, probably where the oil poured out from. I would check out all fluid levels all over the tractor. Rear end, hydrauilic system, differential cases, etc. Do you have an oil-filled air cleaner? CHECK it. And so on. Changing all the filters in a few hours might be a good idea too. you put fluids where they normally are not, and may have rinsed a lot of dirt & crud into the fluids that cakes up over the years. Again, glad this turned out well for you, could have been bad. Thank you for sharing with us, wake up calls are good for all of us to note every now & then. --->Paul
Thanks for the responses everybody. As always, your comments were both accurate and gentle. FWIW, I didn't come away totally unscathed. I'm ITCHING like mad! Darn poison ivy. Ross, you said, "Your bush hog has a CV joint not a standard U joint?" I'm sure I'm just using the wrong terminology. The thing that broke is one of the two pins that hold the U joint together. Basically I now have two seperated 'U's rather than two connected 'U's. I hope I'm making sense. My daughter is out of town with my digital camera, otherwise I'd post some pics. Rambler, you're absolutely right. I WAS going too fast given the circumstances. Thanks for being honest, no offense taken. Michael p.s. - Anybody know where I can find a book that will help me better understand the workings of the tractor. For example, there seem to be two oil filters. At least there are two filters attached. I'm sure one is for oil and the other???
One for oil, the second for hydraulic oil; most likely. What are the numbers or words on the filters? What brand?
Owner manuals for alot of machinery can be found offered on Ebay for a fair price. Someone once siad that yanmar was who made the smaller JohnDeere tractors for the us too.... not sure about that could have been another company. The 2 filters i had on my diesel John Deere were dual fuel filters, then the oil filter was on the opposite side, and the hydraulic filtercwas located inside in the transmission... where of course to clean it you had to drain the whole fricking tranny...... engineering at its finest.... they only made that model one year of course. William
For manuals: ebay is a good source, if you have patience. There are some good links for manuals & all sorts of tractor literature at www.ytmag.com - the upper left corner mentions 'manuals'. Also www.tractorbynet.com has many sections on compact tractors, including your brand. A U-joint is made up of a U on both sides, and a cross in the middle. Did the cross break? It will have 4 cups on the ends (cups are held into the U ends with little clips under the layers of grease), with needle bearings in the cups. You can buy replacement crosses at farm supply stores, come with new cups & needles. It is a tedious proccess to replace them, a vice, big hammer, and taking your time works. A hyd press makes it almost fun. Or did a bolt/ pin break on either shaft that held the U portion onto that shaft? The pin is frequently a shear bolt, and each mower has it's own idea of the hardness of the bolt. Grade 2 is soft & shears, grade 5 is much harder & breaks cleanly, grade 8 is most always _way_ too hard but whatever the manufaturer says goes... I would guess one of the filters is oil, and the other is your fuel filter. Fuel filter often should be changed about every 3-5 oil changes, but the manual will tell you better. Somewhere on your tranny/ rear end you may find another filter, that would be the hydraulic oil filter. Oh, if your tractor runs out of fuel, or you introduce air into the lines by changing the filter, you might need to bleed the injectors to get it to run again. Just a heads-up. Will be covered in your manual. --->Paul
I'm not going to say there is no such thing as a grade 2 shear bolt but I have never encountered it. Grade 5 is common and I have read a Buhler online (now I can't find it!) manual that called for a grade 8 shear bolt. Grade 2 is too soft and will flex too much before tearing apart. Torch it sounds like you need a new U joint. If the cross broke the yokes may be too stressed to use again. You might be lucky and Paul is right about changing them, although a few use clips on the inside of the yoke rather than the outside. You'll invent new words trying to fix those! Some PTO's do use CV joints I had a Vicon RP1210 round baler with one. Very nice zero chatter on extreme corners, but very expensive to fix. As said I'm sure your hydraulic system will have a filtre, my skidsteer has two plus an engine oil filtre and my 6710 Ford has three.
Agree with about every thing that has been said. One oil filter and one hydrolic(sp) filter. Just a suggestion - after you have you walked the lay of the land you can back into an unknown overgrown area with the brush hog raised until the rear tires contact the overgrown vegitation, lower the brush hog and drive foward cutting just what the hog covers and repeat until you can see and have clear maneuvering room. It takes longer but may be a lot safer.
NH balers use grade 2, at least those 40 years old. Lots of equipment from that era does. As well my snow blower pto uses a rather large #2 bolt as shear protection. Many of the low hp implements I have such as cement mixer, wood splitter, etc have gr2 in them, not sure there were many gr5 bolts available back when they were built! I believe my post hole digger calls for #2, as a #5 would be stronger than the thin pipe shaft & would tear out the hole before the bolt gave. It does bend & feather the bolt if it shears, can be difficult to remove it as it smears the bolt as it shears it off. Gr5 will snap off clean. But, you make good points. I've heard of gr8 being used too, but that is rather rare. Most new things use a gr5. But, check the manuals! --->Paul
"A U-joint is made up of a U on both sides, and a cross in the middle. Did the cross break? It will have 4 cups on the ends (cups are held into the U ends with little clips under the layers of grease), with needle bearings in the cups." Actually the cross is fine. One of my cups is gone though, that is what allowed the cross to disengage from one of the Us. Thanks for the tips on repair. I don't have a hydrolic press so I guess I won't have fun fixing it. Thanks also for the manual tips. I use an ebay tool called auctionsniper.com that will run searches on a schedule and email the results. I'll set up a search and be patient. Thanks again to everybody. Michael
The cross is $7-15, while a whole new U joint is closer to $100. It is just tetious manual labor with the vice & hammers & punch to get it appart. A torch sitting in the background has helped.... When you put it together again & it doesn't quite clamp together no matter what you do, pull it apart, dig out the needle bearing or 2 that fell out of line and onto the back of the cap, line them all up with more grease to (hopeully this time) hold them in place, and try assembling again. Been there, done that. Think I have done 5-6 of these in the past 2 years. --->Paul
If you have an all pro close to you they charged me 6.00 bucks to put a new u-joint on my drive shaft I already had the joint though after I tried the vise and socket trick. but that was on my jeep and not a tractor lol.
