Repair of Grass Sucker

[Don52]

Definition of Problem
The sucker is mounted on top of the mower deck of the X-Mark tractor. It sucks the grass from the deck and blows it into two bags mounted on the rear of the tractor. It is attached to the tractor by a pivot on one side and a ledge on the other side. It is retained on the ledge by a latch. The pivot allows the sucker to be rotated out of position to clean any grass that could clog the chute. The pivot part of bracket broke. Pictures 1 to 5 show the broken pivot portion of the bracket.

Don

[Don52]

Repair
I ground a groove around all sides of the crack and welded it up. Pictures 5 to 8 show the welded up bracket. The latch, which holds the sucker to the ledge was bent and on several occasions my customer noticed that the sucker had fallen off the ledge. When this happens the entire weight of the sucker is cantilever supported by the pivot. As the tractor goes over bumps it applies a moment load to the pivot, which caused the fatigue cracks to form. The rust on the crack indicates that it was cracked for some time. On the internet there is little mentioned about anyone else having problems with the bracket of the sucker. I believe that the root cause was the bent latch, which caused the sucker to fall off the ledge , which resulted in excessive moment load to the pivot side of the sucker.

[ryanjones2150]

What did you weld it up with?

[Don52]

I TIG welded it using an ER70S2 rod on my Dynasty 200DX welder.

Don

[M J Mauer]

Looks OK to me.

[Don52]

Attached are two pictures of the Sucker attached to the X-Mark tractor.
In the "Sucker Latched" picture I added an arrow showing the latch that fell off.
In the "Sucker Unlatched" picture I added an arrow showing the pivot that I welded.

[Don52]

It was difficult to see the latch in the above picture "Sucker Latched", so I added a close up picture so that you can see it better.