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Worm gears on a manure spreader

B

billac

New Member
My first question for the group.
I have an old manure spreader and the apron chain runs on a worm gear inside of a gearbox.
The gear is toast and I haven't been able to find a replacement.I can save thousands of loonies if I can get the old girl running
instead of buying another machine.
Is there a good machine shop near S'toon that might be able to duplicate a 6 inch gear ?The size is oddball enough that no
matches can be found already made up.
 
Have you tried any farm equipment wrecking yards? Or looked for a parts spreader?

I haul junk manure spreaders all the time and I'm floored they go to auction, but as you said an old worn out one is still cheaper than a new one. And it does the same job.
 
billac said:
Is there a good machine shop near S'toon that might be able to duplicate a 6 inch gear ?The size is oddball enough that no
matches can be found already made up. A couple that come up in google are Custom Machine and Mechanical Services, Bernie's Machine works. Google search brings up a bunch of options.
Click to expand...
 
Chip Maker said:
Lots of manure spreaders in the government!
Click to expand...
i'm surprised no one's taken it as a handle .....

this Old Manure Spreader says..... on finding a machine shop, keep in mind a worm wheel is a different animal, a spur gear won't mate. You might be able to approximate it cutting at an angle. That may work, but to cut it properly it needs someone who can hob it which is less common..... at $100/h form cutters on an angle might be an expensive experiment.

If its an odd ball i'd be thinking about the possibility of adapting a new worm and wheel, a used one pulled from something or adapting a new/used gearbox with a similar ratio. Unfortunately none sound cheap or easy 🙁
 
Bandit said:
Oh man, worked on a few pieces of equipment that had been fixed with grade 8 or from some welding fix. Often very expensive to fix.
Click to expand...

Seems to me that this is the biggest issue I encounter fixing farm equipment around here. No idea why so many farmers can't seem to grasp the basics.

"The grade 5 bolt snaps so I put a grade 8 in there instead."

Just like "the 5amp fuse keeps blowing so I put a 20amp in there."
 
historicalarms said:
Ha Ha , one of my old mans trucks had a short in it that kept blowing fuses. One fall he needed that truck to run through harvest with no downtime so he pushed two empty .22 cases together and inserted into the fuse bar...truck was used for another 15 yrs without a light failure !!
Click to expand...

He got lucky and you know it! You wouldn't do that - would you?

Truth is that I got lucky when someone did that too. A local farmer (I actually know who he is) put a big fuse in cuz he kept blowing the light fuse too. Then he fused the wiring buried inside a wiring bundle so lots of stuff didn't work.

He traded the tractor in. The dealer tried and failed to fix it for over a year. The dealer knew me from my career and sold the tractor to me at half what it was worth and even then under the condition that I could have my money back if I couldn't fix it. Plus they loaned me the service manuals and full tech support.

Turned out the light wiring had dropped and was rubbing on the air conditioning compressor. But instead of tracing that problem out, he just started playing Russian roulette with fuses which fused the harness internally.

I just worked it backward one step at a time and fixed everything. I even discovered an error in the wiring diagram and fed that info back to service. It took me almost a year but saved me 50 grand.

So I guess one could say that guys using bigger fuses can work out ok.
 
My shear pins are always just regular 3/8 bolts . i used to get 75 or so loads out of one
but my son and nephew both need a pin every 10 loads or so.
That is why the worm gear failed. Overloads and go like hell.
 
billac said:
My shear pins are always just regular 3/8 bolts . i used to get 75 or so loads out of one
but my son and nephew both need a pin every 10 loads or so.
That is why the worm gear failed. Overloads and go like hell.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised that regular bolts work. They usually deform and often bugger up the system. Grade 5 bolts shear nice and clean and work much better. You might need 5/16 though because grade 5 is stronger than regular grade.
 
billac said:
My shear pins are always just regular 3/8 bolts . i used to get 75 or so loads out of one
but my son and nephew both need a pin every 10 loads or so.
That is why the worm gear failed. Overloads and go like hell.
Click to expand...
When i was a kid. The big Green company would bring their $#it spreaders out to the farm. Load them up and come back in February with a 120hp tractor and let her rip. Good times!
 
Martin w said:
When i was a kid. The big Green company would bring their $#it spreaders out to the farm. Load them up and come back in February with a 120hp tractor and let her rip. Good times!
Click to expand...
This is why whenever you buy equipment it'll break as soon after the warranty is up. They don't want you using the same equipment for 40 years.
 
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