[AT] Adventures with shear pins

charlie hill charliehill at embarqmail.com
Fri Jul 25 06:58:59 PDT 2014


Dean,  I stopped using shear bolts a long time ago
because I never ever had one shear when I hit something
but had a lot of them break from wear when I was mowing
along in good conditions and it always happened at the very
worst time and place, usually when I was half a mile from my
truck and tools.   So I started using Grade 8 bolts of course they
didn't help the PTO shaft I twisted up like a soda straw one day.
Luckily it was the slip shaft on the mower not the internal shaft
in the tractor.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: Dean VP
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2014 10:43 PM
To: 'Antique tractor email discussion group'
Subject: Re: [AT] Adventures with shear pins

Dean,

Doesn't the brush hog have a slip clutch?  If it does it isn't doing its 
job. May be frozen due to age
and the elements.  A shear pin isn't necessarily just a grade 5 bolt.  May 
require something harder.
Check the Owner's Manual of the Brush Hog for the right pin. You probably 
have already done that.
Don't want the wrong pin in there and then not do the job it is supposed to. 
I've owned a Brush
cutter for over 10 years and have never sheared a pin and I've gotten into 
some really nasty stuff
with it.   But I won't mention the name of manufacturer of it!  :-)

Dean VP
Snohomish, WA

They say necessity is the mother of invention.
Don't know who the father is, probably remorse.
Red Green

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com 
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of
Dean Vinson
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2014 7:20 PM
To: 'Antique tractor email discussion group'
Subject: [AT] Adventures with shear pins

I've given up brush hogging the scruffier areas of my new place until the
summer growth dies down and I can do more effective walk-throughs.   Lots of
hard old osage orange branches laying low in the grass, along with
occasional bits of nasty junk like cinder blocks and old rusty tangles of
woven-wire fence sections.   I've replaced the shear bolt on the mower quite
a few times, and had to have somebody out to fix a flat rear tire on the 620
after a heavy piece of wire--possibly from that mass of old fence
wire--punctured it.   Time to stop beating up the equipment and wait until I
can really clear all the obstructions out.

But the weather was spectacularly nice this evening, so after finishing up
another chore I hooked the 620 back up to the mower and went out to the
meadow by the orchard.   It had all been mowed last fall when I first
visited this place and I walked around it several times back then, all very
nice and trimmed, almost yard-like, so I was confident I wouldn't hit
anything.    Spun up the brush hog, eased the clutch forward, and off I
went...and then not two minutes later heard the mower suddenly hit
something, followed by the "pop" of the shear bolt breaking and the sound of
the mower coasting down, no longer being driven by the PTO.   #*^@! it, what
the heck was down there?

Turned out to be about 150 feet of very nice rubber garden hose, loosely
coiled up in big easy ovals and spread over an area about four feet wide and
eight feet long.   Still had water in it, or at least it did before that
mower chopped it into about 20 pieces.   I hope the previous owner doesn't
want it back...

Dean Vinson
Saint Paris, Ohio

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