Re: MTD Yardman Transaxle Rebuild
Had fun messing with my plow. At 4pm I was coating the moldboard to try to keep snow from sticking and just looking it over. I discovered that the horizontal hinge pin retaining bolt had sheared and the pin had worked out about an inch. The problem was getting it lined up and tapped back in by myself. I finally asked my next door neighbor to help. I tried having a tree help me but it just wasn't listening and doing what I wanted it to.
I'm going to have to limp through this storm with it like it is. I think I've been plowing with it like that for a couple of storms. I think I can extract the sheared bolt from the pin and just replace that end of the hardware. I tried to grab with vice grips but it's too rounded off and not enough to grab. Might need to borrow a right angle drill - I don't have one. It would be nice not to have to pull and replace the pin. Being a 10 year old plow all the hardware I'd have to loosen to remove/replace it is pretty stuck. Needs a new edge set for next season too. The leading edge is getting close to the moldboard.
A little visit from Mr Welding Rod can work wonder on that sort of stuff particularly if he is accompanied by Miss Old Bearing-Race
The heating cooling usually breaks the rust bonding and the race provides a nice big anchor point for a breaker bar
If you go the hammer through way, put a scissor type jack behind the shaft to support it and attack the pin with an air chisel with the pointy end appropriately reshaped.
10,000 little taps a minute does a lot less damage than than flailing around a 20 lb hammer, particularly if you can put a bit of pressure on the air chisel to start with.
I also have a collection of Malleable Iron G clamps with different size holes drilled through the anvil end so they can be used to push pins through.
Back in the "bad ol days" it was a length of 1" heavy walled steam pipe ground at one end to fit on the shaft retraining the afore mentioned pin / bolt.
