Sunday, February 24, 2019

Revisiting The John Deere 5100

 Some of you that have been following this blog for a while may remember three years ago when I talked about making a plow mount for one of our tractors.


 This is the actual mount that is removable.


 I like to follow the rule that you can never build something too heavy so when coworker Matt told me my mount was "all broke to shit" I was curious. The machine has three seasons on it now so I suppose we could start seeing some cracks. When I inspected the mount here is what I found:


 I'll include a pic of the actual crack.


 This crack is entirely in the factory push arm and not in my mount. That made me feel better but the way I have it mounted may have been a contributing factor. On trucks a lot of times we see the mount loosen from the frame or flex in other spots but here the plate I made doesn't give at all. The weight of the blade twists on that push arm and it eventually cracked. No problem, we'll just make it stronger.


 Cutting these 1" thick pie slice shaped gussets wasn't easy. The oxy/acetylene torch tip was all jacked up. The plasma cutter had no good tips and the plate of steel I was cutting these from was too big to fit in the band saw. Eventually enough cussing and throwing shit around got the job done.
  I don't think this mount will be giving us any more problems unless theres an accident that causes major damage to the plow or tractor. If it does crack again I'll just weld more gussets on it. There is a small crack on the back side of the push arm but I'll weld that when the whole mount comes off this spring.


 The tractor has been a great unit for us. The front blade has power wings on it and when they are extended the blade width is 11 feet. On the rear we can run a snowblower but the tool of choice has been the 16 foot Ebling back blade.


 Its been a busy year for us plow jockeys. Lots of little stuff and a couple of bigger events along with an awful lot of salt usage. In a perfect world we'd get a few decent snow storms in march then a big thaw and be ready to start lawn work by April 1st.

Later.
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2 comments:

  1. BJFebruary 24, 2019 at 4:06 PM

    Nice welds! When I weld it usually looks like a bad paper mache project. But those JD tractors are pretty decent. Had ours for 25 years and the only thing that's replaced is the upper arm of the three point hitch. A keeper on the one of the lower arms came off and backed over the blade when plowing at night. Learned to use high tension keepers and not to order parts through the dealer, it's expen$ive!

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  2. Scott SeidlFebruary 24, 2019 at 5:10 PM

    As an employee I use whatever parts the boss decides on. Sometimes he goes oem and sometimes aftermarket. No pattern I think he just weighs his options for each repair, but you're right. The JD tractors are pretty decent.

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