This weeks project was to fix a previous repair of the arm of a mower deck from a John Deere 318 tractor. The function of the arms is to lift up the mower deck. The arm had been repaired by the previous owner, but wasn't done very well. The stick welds had a lot of flux inclusions and poor penetration. There were two stiffener plates welded to both sides of the original arm and there were four holes drilled in the arm for bolts. in picture 2 the top two pieces are part of the arm and the lower two pieces are the stiffener plates that were added. The arm was also welded to the shaft, which just added additional stress to the bracket without adding any value. I believe that for the original design the shaft just passed through clearance holes and was held in place by spring pins, which can be seen in picture 8. If you look at picture 3, which was part of the arm, you can see a jagged groove that looks to me like a torch cut. As a result of the Torch cut, the flux inclusions and the holes I decided to replace the entire end of the arm. I also had to build up the shaft where it was welded unnecessarily. Picture 9 shows the repaired arm and shaft back in place.
Don
Don
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