Actually getting the 6 set screws out was easy. If the rest is even easier, I'll be good to go. I did a bit of hammering on the PTO hub but not much. Going back to it this evening again for a bit. I did a search here on difficulty removing the main pulley - looks like it can be a struggle. Keep in mind that ALL I'm trying to do is replace a bolt! Why didn't they build them so that the bolt hole was just 1/8 of an inch higher than the pulley. That would avoid alot of extra work. Or is there some reason why it's designed so that the bolt will not fall out but rather, as in my case, wind up being ground to bits by the pulley?
What prompted all this is that the tractor (129 hydrostatic) started hard this morning - made a rather weird sound while cranking. I suspected the ACR system being that it gave trouble a few years ago. Took off the cover, though, and found that all the springs are in the correct place. Then, in looking around a bit more, I saw the loose bolt against the pulley. I'm thinking that the extra drag possibly caused the hard starting?
As to using the correct bolt size, it seems that the threads go deeper than the length of the bolt that was in there, so I have one that's about the same (or perhaps just a tad longer) as the broken one - so that should be fine? I'm hesitant to admit this, but I spent a good amount of time grinding down a bolt - thinking that it wouldn't take much to get it down to a size where it would go in without having to do any front engine work. No dice. I wound up grinding that sucker down to the point where it only had 5 sides (who doesn't want a pentagon-shaped bolt in their engine?) and was no wider than the shaft. Still didn't work. And, even if it would have, I guess it's more likely that it would have snapped off from being heated up so often on the grinding wheel. All that time grinding might as well have been spent trying to remove the pulleys! Like I said..not a mechanic.
|