Rotary cutter adjustments. Improving mower float.

[Music] neil from messick's here to answer a viewer question regarding a bush hog top link if you'd like to ask me a question shoot a short video and email it to youtube messicks.com hello i'm neil amberg and i'm a third generation family farmer we are in actually upstate new york near the finger lakes and as you can see we are a vineyard farmer and one of ten of our tractors is this kubota l-3240 which is by far our most dependable tractor hands down no questions asked we'll start up in the winter just fine no matter what condition um i don't really have a question about the tractor per se but more the fact that this sector has 3 000 hours on it and one of its major jobs during the summer is to do all of our mowing on all 40 acres of our vineyard and that might not seem like a lot but for around here that's actually a pretty decent-sized vineyard farm in upstate new york uh and one of the main things i was questioning about is with our area we have a lot of hills and with those hills obviously if you have a solid three-point link arm like we have currently uh the mower deck really isn't able to maneuver or adjust to the height of the ground and as you can see possibly even one of my co-workers when they were running this the actual third link arm got bent because of a hill and usually what i do is as lower the motor deck all the way to the ground and literally disconnect that third link arm from the mower deck itself so that way the mower deck can adjust and then what i would do is just to bungee cord it up like so just that way the mower deck can adjust by itself but i mow eight plus hours a day and have to do that to half a dozen to a dozen times a day and it's tedious to say the least my question is that is there anything out there like for a tractor of this size or even any type of mower deck where the you can keep like the third link attached or something that will adjust the mower deck up and down uh pivot wise like this to adjust to the contours of the ground if so that would be amazing because on my farm i'm really the only one who does that and if the more times the third link armor is not able to be adjusted or the mower deck isn't able to maneuver around the ground more times that is going to be bent so that's my question to you if there's anything out there like that or what might help with the contouring of the ground uh i know might be a stretch but anything would be helpful thank you so you are absolutely right that there are some limitations to the vertical rear travel of your bush hog when you bind things up against that rear rear tail wheel and have some more extreme changes you can run into some funny situations where you can things don't flex exactly how you want now there is actually a mechanism built into pretty well every bush hog like this or rotary cutter if we're using the right names that provides a little bit of this and i was trying to watch your mower there in the course of the video and i think this part was functioning properly but you might want to go back and take a look and make sure it's moving freely that's right up here generally on most mowers at the top of the hitch you're going to find what they call a flex link that comes back from the hitch and attaches to these vertical arms that piece is there to move and to allow a little bit of range of motion for the top part here of the mower and that's going to allow this back wheel to be able to lift up a little bit when you go across some of those uneven areas so the very first thing that i would do would be to take a look at your mower there and make sure that piece is moving freely and if it's not maybe loosen up some bolts or add some grease in order to allow those parts to move now there's a thing or two that you could do in the back of your tractor in order to improve the range of motion of your top link without going and removing it altogether every machine is basically going to come through with a standard manually adjusted top link but that doesn't mean that this is necessarily your only option if you've already got rear remotes on your tractor and you've added the eight nine hundred dollars at cost in order to put that extra set of outlets out the back of the tractor taking the next step further to put a hydraulic top link on or at least to own one to swap out when you want it makes a lot of sense in my mind hydraulic top links very simply are going to replace your normal mechanically turned screw top link here with a hydraulic cylinder with the same kind of ends on the end here that you would have on a traditional top link and by plugging that into a rear remote it allows you to make adjustments here to that top link from the seat of your tractor without having to jump off now ideally in your application the best way to have this thing would be able to put this into a float position that would allow that cylinder to go in and out on its own and truly you know float that mower and really get a wide range of motion there across the back you're going to want to watch when you go through and you plug your hydraulic top link into your remotes some are going to be called what's self-canceling remotes and some are going to be float detent remotes i have some other videos that go through and talk through all the different styles of valves that come out the back of the tractor but they're not all the same ideally what you would want in your application would be a float detent hydraulic remote more often than not the very first one that's in the first position is a self-canceling remote and usually the float detent remotes go into position number two it's a very good chance if you've got a tractor that only has one rear remote it's a self-canceling remote and you're not going to have that float function now self-canceling would absolutely help in this situation it would give you the ability to make some of those adjustments from the tractor itself but float would really be the way to do it and especially too if you think through all the forces that are involved here if you have a firmly attached hydraulic cylinder right here and you've bent some top links before by going through and doing some of this stuff you very easily could bend your more expensive hydraulic top link by having the back of that mower shoved up and all that force coming back into it so a float detent attached hydraulic top link is really the bee's knees when it comes to this kind of thing as easy it is to recommend the expensive solutions of rear remotes and hydraulic cylinders and stuff uh simple mechanical things can get the job done like this too there's some unique hardware that's included with some land pride quick hitches for the back of your tractor that i often don't see in other places it's not generic hardware that you just pick up off the the shelf where you pick up your you know your three-point pins and that kind of thing lampright quick hitches uh qh 10 15 all will come through with these extra brackets now this is nothing more than some category one pins and then these pieces of metal right here that you can go through and basically what it does is allow you to create another hinge point right here off of your three-point implements giving you more of that range of motion i don't know where to tell you exactly to pick up this hardware other than the dive into the parts catalogs for a lan pride qh 15 quick hitch i'm sure you can buy these little plates separately and it would give you a very easy way in order to create this additional hinge point in order to expand that range of motion so that's three simple things that you can do in order to improve how your mower is going to flex and contour with the ground going through and checking to make sure that linkage on the back of the mower is moving freely considering something like a hydraulic top link and utilizing that simple hardware that comes with the quick hitches to expand that range of motion if you're going through the buying process for a piece of equipment or if you have parts or service needs that we can help with give us a call at messick's we're available at 800-222-3373 if you'd like to shoot me a shorty shoot as easy it is as easy as it is to recommend the nearly 2 000 as easy as it is to recommend the 1300 so those are three simple i just did three and i made a two

Channel: Messick's Equipment

Views: 75,980

Keywords: Messicks, Kubota, new, holland, caseih, case, krone, farm, equipment, tractor, tractors, farming, farminglife, construction

Id: RSuUNN59LT4

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021