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NE Iowa | John,
It sounds to me like you have an engagement point problem, not a torque capacity or bearing problem (the other 2 things that can go wrong with viscous fan drives). This will take some work, but for the $$, might be worth the trouble. Take a look at the front of the drive and you should see some type of bi-metalic spring. As the air heats up coming through the coolers, this spring moves and opens a valve in the drive allowing the fluid to move into the clutch portion of the drive making it go faster. Usually there is a tab on this spring that is sort of glued in place - it is what Eaton uses to calibrate the drive to the correct engagement temperature. You can try deflectign that tab to essentially bias the spring so that it takes less spring motion to open the internal valve. I have even seen where the glue is completely gone and some type of setscrew arrangement is used to make this adjustment to the tab. Be careful, it doesn't take much of an adjustment to make a big difference.
If this doesn't work, and you are deadset against spending the money on the overpriced JD drive, you could try going for a OTR truck drive that is basically on or off and is activited by air pressure. You could then put a switch in the tractor cab and make your own decision as to when the fan gets turned on. This doesn't seem like to good of an alternative, but it is a possibility.
I do think JD does have a set of lockout straps for this fan drive, but I can't find them in the JD parts system. That would make the tractor eat some fuel and make more noise, but it would stay cool.
Chris
Chris | |
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Viscous fan drive JD9300
