Hagen Brothers farms,Goodrich ND | "The bolts that hold my loader to the tractor frame are loosening up. Any suggestions outside of welding to keep these buggers from backing out?? They have lock washers on. "
If you have a sharp new lock washer on them,those bolts may stretching instead of backing out. Remove one of them and inspect the thread pitch of the threaded portion between the head and the part that is inside the tractor casting to see if the thread pitch is wider on the exposed thread area under the head,indicating bolt stretch. It also works to run a nut on the bolt and see if it gets tight near the head end. The amount of stretch some of those bolts show scares the heck out of me.
A few years ago I exploded the main gear case on a 1482 pull type combine in part because of my having way too much tractor on the pto. The grade 5 bolts in the gear case seemed to loosen so I had to tighten them every day. I finally saw the light too late when several of those grade 5 bolts stretched to the point that the heads popped off,without those bolts,the case could not take the torque and opened up like a broken egg. After seeing those headless bolt stubs in the broken gear case,I realized that the grade 5 bolts could not take the load. When I replaced the gear case I used grade 8 bolts and never had another bolt "backout" on that unit. I was lucky that it blew up without damaging any gears or shafts,but still cost over $ 400 for the case. Expensive lesson learned. |
Locktite
