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I have been working off and on to rebuild a 3 point tiller I inherited. It has been slow going due to some time constraints, life events, and a general lack of knowledge/experience with this kind of project. I'm creating this thread in the hopes i might be able to get some advice from fellow goons and maybe give myself a reason to keep on track with the project. We'll see how that goes. This is the tiller in question.  I never intended to make a thread, and don't have a good picture of the tiller by itself, but this is the model i'm dealing with. Mine is significantly more beat up and was clearly ridden hard at some point. The person i inherited it from never used it, and so it sat outside for about 10 years before i got my hands on it. Prior to that it was used by a local business that grew flowers for dried arrangements. I'm not sure if there were any other owners. I would ultimately like to use it to till my garden. The area is small now, but might encompass more area in the future. I don't see using it more than twice a year in that small area, so instead of replacing all the bearings i'm going to clean up and salvage what i can and just replace what is necessary. If i need to do a tear down again in a few years I will. Again, i never planned to do a thread, so a lot of my pictures are taken with a lovely phone just to help me remember how things came apart/go back together.  I started by asking an acquaintance how i should start the project. His advice was to fill the gear boxes with kerosene and run it under no load to clean things out. I started with this side box that transfers the power from the transmission shaft to the tiller shaft. Unfortunately the tiller shaft seals were too far gone to hold the kerosene and it all just ran out. So i decided to just start taking it apart.  The bad seal was around the bearing housing. Despite the blurry as poo poo pic you can see it's a little wet at the bottom where the kero ran out.  The transmission tube/shaft  Gross, but not a total nightmare. Teeth on the gears are in great shape, things still move. Just needs some clean up, especially where the gasket goes.  Cover is also in good shape. Nylon nut in the middle seems fine, just needs some attention along the gasket surface.  The bearing on the central gear was pretty gnarly looking. Crud, rust, rolled about as stiffly as you would expect. I got it cleaned up, no pictures of that unfortunately, but got it greased up (which may not have been the right move, after seeing the top gearbox i think it might rely on gear oil for lubrication. just something else i need to figure out.)  Pulled the top gear and got a similar looking bearing. I'm hoping to clean up and reuse this one too. Not sure if i should grease this one or not, seems high up in the gear box to get lubricated by the gear oil. I wonder if there is any harm in greasing the bearings in addition to the gear oil?  Lower bearing also looking a bit cruddy, i would like to salvage this bearing but it depends on how the removal of the bearing housing goes. I'm going to need to put in a new seal here anyway, so if i have to pull the old bearing to put in a new seal i'll see about a new one.  Just another view of that bearing after i pulled the tiller shaft.  Bearing on the other side of the tiller shaft. loving SMOKED. Seals are bad here, and it must have been run without lube and dirt getting in for awhile.  same bearing after some heat and a few PB blasts. I got the inner snap ring off no problem, but the other one was seized in there hard. I hit it with heat and PB and smacked it over, and over, and over. loving thing would not let go. I wasn't sure how to drill/cut it out without loving up the housing, so i just kept at it, for a while.  FINALLY broke it loose. I almost poo poo when it came loose, i thought the pliers had slipped and started swearing at it, and then i realized it was finally free. Thank gently caress.  While i was struggling with that snap ring i decided to take off the upper gear box and transmission shaft  Going to try and clean-up and throw some paint at the body of the tiller. I might even prime it with por-15 first.  Gear box looked pretty good from the outside  Seals on the gearbox were still holding so i'm not going to take it apart, just clean it up.  Inside didn't look too bad, a little surface rust but the box was still full of gear oil so everything was pretty well preserved. You can see some sediment that needs to be washed out, but otherwise it's looking pretty good.  Gearbox end of the transmission shaft is in good shape too. Bearing looks good (all three in the gearbox were lubricated by gear oil which was still in there, so no real rust to speak of.)  Now i've got to pull the bearing housings from either end of tiller shaft, but i'm not sure where to go from here. I was thinking there might be a shaft internal to the tube the tines are attached to, similar to the transmission shaft/tube. I finally got a parts diagram (after a lot of pleading) and there doesn't seem to be separate pieces.  Does anyone have any suggestions about where i got from here as far as taking off those housings so i can replace the seals and whatever else needs replacing?
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Nov 30, 2016 00:36
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I have no input but salute your project. With good documentation and photographs as you go, re-assembly should go smoothly. Also, you might want to try contacting Kuhn directly with any questions you might have, smaller american companies will usually give you a fair shake when it comes to customer support.
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Nov 30, 2016 00:52
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Suspect Bucket posted:I have no input but salute your project. With good documentation and photographs as you go, re-assembly should go smoothly. Also, you might want to try contacting Kuhn directly with any questions you might have, smaller american companies will usually give you a fair shake when it comes to customer support. Thanks for the Kudos! I have contacted Kuhn, and their only response has been to give me the number for a local dealer. Kuhn is (or was) based out of France, so the support hasn't been great. Admittedly i'm asking for help with a piece of equipment that is no longer manufactured, is entry level, and could be anywhere for 20-40 years old. I don't exactly represent a valuable customer. It took lots of emails with dealers to get a .pdf of the parts diagram from one of them.
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Nov 30, 2016 02:48
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