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Anyone built a new cutter bar for a sickle bar?


cschmidt62

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Has anyone built a new cutter bar for their sickle bar? Mine broke at a rivet hole and I had it welded back together by someone who I consider to be one of the best. It lasted only a short time after I got it back together before it broke again in the same spot. Can a new bar be built out of cold rolled steel or does it need to be an alloy of some kind? Just wondering what your thoughts were.

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There was a member here who made up a jig for hole spacing then was making bars.

If you do get one, double check wear on guides etc, and do not run the engine speed fast when mowing. Slow walk speed in 2nd gear if I remember correctly.

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Last I knew Dan Lonnen (rokon2813) had one for sale. Drop Dan a PM.

I believe Howard Tews (HTews) made a jig and sickle bars for members awhile ago. Search the archives and find those threads.

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I made a sickle bar for a New Idea mower many years ago. I used 1045 cold rolled bar of the proper size. I work in a machine shop so I put the holes in on a bridgeport mill. I used the mower for three years and then sold it, the bar worked fine without problems. On that one, you could substitute screws for the rivots, which I did.

Steve

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I went to tractor supply and got the same size flat bar stock and clamped the original cutter bar to the new stock and used the holes in the old bar as drill guides.

New bar seemed to work fine. Mowed 3 acre pasture with it afterwards without incident

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Thanks for all the input guys...I have always ran this sickle bar at low rpm. I think it was abused before I got it. I've had to rebuild the drive link assembly last year. The cutter bar broke where the cutter head attaches to the cutter bar which has to be one of the most stressfull points on the sickle bar. I never thought about using screws instead of rivets...did you use loctite to prevent the screws from backing out?

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If you had to build a new sickle bar I think it would help to build one that uses standard components. I believe original guards and sickle sections are hard to come by

Maybe adapt a farm mower bar to simplicity?

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There was an article about someone converting to larger standard size cutters etc.

But I'm pretty sure he also had to change the stroke to match section size.

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When I used the screws, they had locking nuts with them. I don't know if they make them for the size you need, but they did for the farm mower I had. The supply house that had the teeth also had the screws or rivots.

Laying the old one over the new bar is a good idea. I had a cnc machine to make mine so the spacing was easy.

Steve

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