Here you can see the unit from the rear. Note that I took the liberty
to open up the inspection plate opening to the size I feel it should
have been opened to by the factory. This much larger opening will make
life less miserable down the road when the time comes to work on
anything under the dash, be it the choke/throttle assembly or even
access to the PTO neutral safety switch. One little tip on the
choke/throttle assembly, weld NUTS to the one that will be the lower of
the two, and install the setup using stainless steel socket head cap
screws from the top. Later on, your going to be happy you did it this
way!
A few notes on the above photo. The quickener has a 1/2" offset between
shafts. In other words, the input and output shafts are parallel, but
they are not inline with each other. I found that there was enough slop
in the steering gear bracket's mounting screws that the whole bracket
could be swiveled enough to adjust for this offset, and, swiveling it
this small amount doesn't affect anything else. Another thing to note
is those two larger threaded holes on the unit. These are the main
anchor points that keep this whole unit from turning when you turn the
steering wheel. The angle of this mounting location does not match the
angle of the steering tower, and as such, the inspection cover itself
will need an inset /recessed cutout area for two bolts to affix the
unit. While that sounds difficult, its just a matter of cutting 3 slots
in the plate, then bending it inwards so the angle matches the gearbox.
Then you weld sides and a bottom into that cutout.
You may have noticed that the whole unit rides pretty close to the top
of the dash, and that I shortened the tube that stuck through the dash
a little. In order to keep the dash from bending if you pull on the
steering wheel, I had to create some new bracketry to spread the load
out. below you can see the start of this reinforcement.
If your really paying attention, you probably also notice the
"adapters" that have to be made to go from female spline to 5/8" shaft.
There is a word of caution here too. The female spine adapters they
offer are a little sloppy. When you slide them onto the spline and then
tighten the lock screw, they do not turn concentric. During mock up, it
became immediate that you can not have this condition with this short
of shafting on each end. The shafts must end up turning concentric to
the spline shaft... NOT the adapters. So, I did have to take my time
with these to get them right. I did not do anything sophisticated.
First, I cut key ways into plain old shaft collars, then key ways into
some new 5/8" shaft. The spline shafts on the steering gear have a
hollow in each end, so I turned the ends of the 5/8" shaft down to fit
into the ends of the spline shafts snugly. This way, during mock up
and tacking, the straight shaft turned concentric with the spline shaft
and the female spline could be tightened up and welded to the collars
accurately.
Below, I show the shaft prep and the tacked up adapters to welding.
After welding, I cut those turned area off of the shafts.
Jumping ahead to an assembly photo, you can see the final outcome of
the steering gear installation.
As you can see, the unit is super compact and fits perfect. The larger
inspection plate opening offers plenty of room to get at anything that
could go wrong down the road. The opening is also large enough to allow
complete removal of this gear for service if necessary. When the oil
tank is installed, the square shaped cutout in the back of
the tank coincides perfectly with the steering reduction gear and even
allows perfectly open access to those cap screws in the top of it if
you want to check the grease in the gear.The minimum clearance is about
1/4" at the closest point, so there is nothing to rub or rattle....
anywhere.
The GREAT NEWS is that if the gear ever completely fails and you have
no other repair options......
you can slide an original shaft back in its place and return to the
original setup !! Now you cant beat that.
These have been the most important modifications I wanted to make to
this particular tractor. Next, its on to Foot Control !
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