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Weed cutter rebuild, Now completed.


Chris727

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Picked up this weed cutter in rough condition last fall. finally tore it apart. It's getting new bearings and belts. Blasted the pulleys and painted them. 

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Edited by Chris727
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4 hours ago, spi said:

It is amazing how many bolts hold those things together.

I chose to just break off most of the carriage bolts. Much easier than having to get a vice grip to hold them from turning and they were being replaced anyway. 

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52 minutes ago, SmilinSam said:

I'd like to find one of those weedmowers made for the Broadmoors....

I think @Talntedmrgreen had determined it was likely they weren't ever produced and that the one in the 1969 brochure photo was a large frame weed cutter pictured next to a yeoman tractor. Though with tinkering they will fit the small frame tractors as both Josh and @bowhunt4life have had them mounted up. 

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Per a former Simplicity employee who worked there in the 60's up into the 90's, there was one prototype made for the Broadmoor and then the whole weed cutter program was cut (pun intended).  I was told it was destroyed.  For many years, Simplicity basically didn't acknowledge that they ever made any of them.  I have never confirmed if there was an accident/injury with one, or if they just got scared of them before anything happened.

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10 hours ago, TimJr said:

Per a former Simplicity employee who worked there in the 60's up into the 90's, there was one prototype made for the Broadmoor and then the whole weed cutter program was cut (pun intended).  I was told it was destroyed.  For many years, Simplicity basically didn't acknowledge that they ever made any of them.  I have never confirmed if there was an accident/injury with one, or if they just got scared of them before anything happened.

Well, the timing of their disappearance from literature coincides with the spike in attention from the government on safety and developing worker protection legislation.  By '68 there had been years of pressure and hearings on safety, Johnson pushed for an act through Congress that year, which failed, but by '70 Nixon had it done.  I think Simplicity and others were looking at associated consumer risks and shoring those up.  

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95% ready to test. Just needed to ad belt. Alas the B207 is now in Baraboo, the weedcutter in Indiana and the fabricated hitch in Michigan. Was a fun project.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here are some further details and a bit of an update. 

A lot of the tin was bent up. I straightened it up a bit and cleaned it. 

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Also had to have one of the skids welded up. IMG_0886.thumb.jpg.d2306ac4d7a419d0744191297d1bef10.jpg

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Was looking pretty shabby but didn't have time to take everything to a blaster and have the chassis done so I just removed the loose rust scale and paint with a wire cup brush on an angle grinder. The plan is to later take it apart again, blast, and paint the whole unit. I just gave it a temporary coat of Rustoleum primer. 

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As bad as this unit looked. I was very lucky that the spindles came apart very easily and no pulleys were destroyed. 

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Its interesting how the main driven pulley goes onto the shaft below the spindle housing. 

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Ran into a couple of snags with the belts and idlers. I was going to use new carriage bolts for the idler pulleys and found the brand of hardware I used had too tall of a shoulder and it would not allow the spacer and pulley to seat and draw tight. I ended up re-using two original bolts and on the third (was not re-usable) I had to place a washer around the bolt to allow the pulley to tighten correctly. Then I found the blue belts (same length as called for) had too wide of a cross section to seat in the pulleys by about an 1/8th inch. They are standard 1/2 by 30" Kevlar belts. "A" - belts. The idler mounts can be positioned for greater adjustment but doing so only brought the pulleys to a point where they would contact the housing.

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Then the solution for the belts, the OEM 50 year old belt I had in stock had a narrower cross section than the new ones. I found the Napa belts made by Gates fit properly, though they are not Kevlar, I do not believe the original was either. 

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More to come later.......

 

 

 

 

Edited by Chris727
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  • 4 weeks later...

An update on the weedcutter.

Got it all assembled with the Napa belts. 

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The original drive hitch was damaged and the original engagement arm connection had been cut off. For this reason I purchased a snow blower hitch from Brett Williams. Upon installation I found that the blower and weed-cutter hitches had opposite angles for one of the pulleys. Also the blower uses a v-idler and a backside idler. The weedcutter uses two backside idlers and thus the arm on which the pulley mounts is also a different length. After bending the blower hitch to closely match  the orignal and swapping an arm and pulley I was able to engage the unit. 

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Swapped arm (above)  Corrected hitch (below)

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For the primary belt I used the same belt as the snow thrower, which is the same one that is called for with the weedcutter. Also used a 4.25" OD pulley for the drive (Browning 3X439)

Test run was successful. 

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Edited by Chris727
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I wish I could find a hitch (or a complete 2nd weed cutter).  I have a pretty nice weed cutter, but it came with a 7000 series style snowblower hitch on it.  Guy I got if from said the guy he got it from tried running in on a 7000 tractor and the original hitch was gone/lost.

I knew a 1960's blower hitch could be modified,  but it would be nice to have an original to make an exact copy. 

Looks like you did a good job of things to get it out in the field again.

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10 minutes ago, TimJr said:

I wish I could find a hitch (or a complete 2nd weed cutter).  I have a pretty nice weed cutter, but it came with a 7000 series style snowblower hitch on it.  Guy I got if from said the guy he got it from tried running in on a 7000 tractor and the original hitch was gone/lost.

I knew a 1960's blower hitch could be modified,  but it would be nice to have an original to make an exact copy. 

Looks like you did a good job of things to get it out in the field again.

Thank you Tim. I had originally planned to attach this to a 7100/900 Series as there is a YouTube video of one being used off the mid-PTO on a '90s Sovereign but was advised that it was not as simple as it looked. 

 

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It's hard to tell in that video what kind of throttle setting they are at, but by my fuzzy math and recollection of size, a PTO pulley on the side of a Sovereign like that is a fair amount larger than the pulley that sticks out the front of a 1960's tractor for front implements.  I would think that unless they kept the engine RPM down, that poor weedcutter was being oversped a fair amount.

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12 hours ago, Chris727 said:

I had originally planned to attach this to a 7100/900 Series as there is a YouTube video of one being used off the mid-PTO on a '90s Sovereign but was advised that it was not as simple as it looked

I'm not saying it would be an easy job, but this is something I considered as well. 

I'm assuming one would use the single pulley blower hitch.

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15 hours ago, TimJr said:

It's hard to tell in that video what kind of throttle setting they are at, but by my fuzzy math and recollection of size, a PTO pulley on the side of a Sovereign like that is a fair amount larger than the pulley that sticks out the front of a 1960's tractor for front implements.  I would think that unless they kept the engine RPM down, that poor weedcutter was being oversped a fair amount.

I hadn't considered that. Changing the size of the driven pulley on the cutter would be difficult as it is a highly specialized pulley. 

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  • 4 months later...

Always a great job Chris!! Others note the center" drive pulley size is limited by the guard that covers it. Also note that chris's face plate blade openings are FLAT and not worn down, therefore help to proved an almost scissor action in operation.

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