Archive through March 03, 2004

[wcompton]

Ken-
If Cub Cadet offered a consumer parts CD I'd be in line, and I'd bet it'd be a long line! There's so many small local dealers or dealers that wave the Cub Cadet sales & service banner out front but you'd be hard pressed to find yellow & white inside. I'm sure it might be annoying for some dealers to have folks stop in and ask for a part, example, if I were looking for a high-back seat for my 169, well the catalog FOR a 169 doesn't list that, but looking in the catalog for a 982 will . . . . but by now the dealer's wasted 10 minutes of his time where he could be productive doing service work, as many small dealers do. The CD would give a consumer the part number and all we'd have to do is walk in or call in the order. . . .

Then again, we'd be all better off by calling a sponsor, every sponsor I've dealt with seems to know part numbers by heart, regardless of where it's listed in a catalog, can't beat that!

 

[kmcconaughey]

Soooo, the Kohler parts CD, the B&S parts CD, the JD parts CD, the Arctic Cat parts CD, the Yamaha parts CD, the Tecumseh parts CD, the Stihl parts CD, the Toro parts CD, the Husqvarna parts CD and the CC parts CD that I have are all forbidden? Oooops! )

 

[digger]

Yea Kraig you better get rid of them real quick, you know my address. hehehe

 

[kmcconaughey]

Paul M., good to see you post again. I look forward to seeing some photos of Tim's Original.

Travis, nice progress! Got any more photos? )

Dave K2, looking good please keep 'em coming!! Just curious, any idea how the shear strength of your stainless steel bolt compares to the spirol pin? I thought one of the benefits of the spirol pins is that they absorb some shock, as well as staying tight in an imperfect hole.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Charlie, hmmmm, I guess I could send them to you, but then you'll just have to get rid of them too! I think it's best that I keep 'em. )

 

[kmcconaughey]

Dave K2, 'nother question, does the shoulder of that bolt bear down on the shaft like a set screw to help prevent the hole from wallowing out, or is the screw where it goes through the hydro input shaft doing all the 'work'?

 

[dfrisk]

KRAIG - I thought Dave's bolt looked exactly like the spider gear shaft keeper bolt in a FORD 8.8" rearend thats always broken right at the end of the threaded portion every time We take the rearend of Son's Lightning Pickup apart. I've had three vehicles with Ford 8.8's and ALL three have had those bolts broken when I've taken them apart. I think the real problem with the driveshafts is the cheap 1018 CF steel bar used for the shaft thats only 5/8" dia. If the shaft was harder like MWSC's 4140 Prehard the shafts & pins would last longer. The pin I sheared in My 72 @ PD #3 was a 14 yr old piece of 1/4" rd. annealed O2 tool steel. It took a sudden jolt in 2nd gear to snap what was left of the pin with around 180# of wheel weights on the drive tires of My CC.

 

[thoffman]

Kraig,
Better answer your door. There's two guys with black suits and sunglasses on on your doorstep.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Tom, would they be Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones or Bob 'n' Bryan? p

 

[thoffman]

I think it might be Cyrus and William. They looked pissed!

 

[dkamp]

Re. the pin's strength...

I can see how people might have situations where pins break on rag-joint couplings, or on the original engine coupler... those pieces aren't very long-in-bore, so they can flip-flop a wee bit on the shaft. The hydro input shaft is also really short, with a chamfer on the outer edge, which exacerbates the radial-slop scenario. When I did both of my engine couplers (moving the rag-joint up front), I re-used the spiral pins, for their strength.

On the u-joint... when you slide that bugger on the shaft... there's NO movement whatsoever... better not have any burrs on the shaft when you fit it in there. When I thread the pin in, there's no play at all... also, the U-joint yoke engages MUCH more shaft length than the factory stuff.

I suppose I could make a few pins, and get an extra U-joint and shaft, and do a series of destructive tests to see what the dynamic and static shear points are at, but I suspect they'll come out to within just a few percent of
calculated shear strength.

These bolts are high-strength stainless pieces (most allen-heads are by nature)... My guess, based on how much the lathe dislikes chewing 'em down, is that they're in the 90ksi range. They're 1/4" in diameter, so calculate the direct-contact shear-strength of a 1/4" rod at 90ksi... displaced from shaft center by half-the-radius of a 5/8"
shaft, and multiply by two. My gut feeling says it'd fail around 200 foot-pounds... while (at running speed) the shaft will start to dangerously deflect (for a running-engine load with a 14" unsupported span, anyway) of around 50 foot pounds, and fail around 150 foot-lbs.

The thing that makes parts shear... is slop. If you put a phone book in a paper-cutter, lay the blade down on it lightly, then stand on the blade, the phone-book will hold you, without being seriously cut. If you take a good quick whack at it, you'll start cutting the book. This same interface is what happens with cross-pins... if there's any slop in the shaft, the pin-joint will become the weak-point... just look at the factory pin-type engine coupler! I imagine that by eliminating that coupler (and it's associated slop) that the amount of driveline shock has gone down quite a bit...

If you use a really hard pin, it'll oval-out the holes in the shaft and yoke. The spiral-pin use takes that into account- it's spring steel will deform a bit to absorb the shock, then return, with out doing too much damage to shaft or yoke.

However, proof-in-puddin'... I've been running this joint-and-crosspin arrangement in the 109 since last July, and I've abused it really bad... haven't done any damage to that machine aside from bending the right-side knuckle, throwing tire-chains, breaking the blade's pivot-locking pin... stuff like that...

 

[kmcconaughey]

Tom, whould they be Ryan's new baby boy and William De Turck aka "Geezer"? )

 

[gwsmith]

 

[kmcconaughey]

Dave K2, thanks for the answer, sounds good to me. )

 

[dfrisk]

DAVE K. - By High Strength SS You mean like 17-4 PH? Or 15-5 PH? If it's a normal 303, 304, or 316, or even worse yet, 18-8 Your tensile on that bolt could be as high as 90-100 KSI. But a proper heat-treatment on 17-4 to H1150M can get you well over 200 KSI. Only time I use SS is when I need better corrosion resistance, Or something SHINY I don't want to bother painting. I used to work in the food processing equip. industry. I learned to hate SS a LONG time ago. It's a very misunderstood material.

 

[dkirk]

Dave Kamp,

On your governor problem - something does not look quite right from your photo's but it's hard to tell what that gob is. Looks to be either a broken tooth or part of the governor spool. The gear is not a high precision fit on the shaft and will wobble a bit. If you could rotate things slightly and take another picture, I'd like to get a better view of the foreign object.

 

[wheinsohn]

Kraig,
You're OK on the JD cd. The parts cd's are for sale to anyone. You can get all of that information and pricing right online with a password to JDParts.com. Sure wish I could look up cub parts and pricing online and see if my dealer had them in stock. I wouldn't be calling Ken so much and asking what parts cost and if he has them in stock.

 

[aaytay]

And I wonder why 90% of the garages around here are filled with green.....

 

[kmcconaughey]

It must just be the Cub Cadet CDs because the person that I got the other parts CDs from couldn't believe that it was such a big deal.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Art, I wish my garage was filled with green! Not JD green, more of a US Mint green if you know what I mean. )