How to Cut Down a PTO Shaft

Hey it's Brock here with Rock Hill Farms And today we're going to cut down the PTO shaft on this mosio Flail Mower We're doing that because it's a little Bit too long and could potentially Damage the tractor or the attachment if It gets into a bind now everything I do And talk about today applies exactly the Same regardless if it's a Flail Mower or A tiller a brush hog any other type of Three-point attachment it's a matter of Determining how long your shaft should Be a minimum length and a maximum length And cutting it in a way that you stay Within that so one way that it's very Obvious that you need to cut down your PTO shaft is if you're getting ready to Hook up your attachment and you don't Have room to get the PTO shaft in Between the PTO and the attachment and In this case I had it lifted up in the Air which makes the shaft longer which Allowed me to just barely fit it in Between there and hook it up But then I came to the realization that In certain configurations of this Attachment that shaft would shorten and Put that in a bind and could damage the Tractor so to demonstrate that I was Just trying to remove this PTO shaft and I've slid the collar back and I've slid The shaft down as far as it'll go and it Still won't come off Because in this configuration I only

Have about one inch Of room for that to slide back And that's not a good situation so I'm Going to have to raise the attachment Enough to get the the PTO shaft off of The tractor that's step one Okay so I was just barely able to Squeeze this off but there was no room To spare so it definitely needs a little Bit taken off of this shaft so now I'm Going to Take the other end of the shaft off and We'll take our measurements of how long This needs to be Okay so if you've ever connected a PTO Shaft you know that on both ends You have your shaft with splines on it And part of the way down your splines You'll have a gap in the splines and That is where your PIN or your bolt that Holds Holds your connector in place that's Where that locks in so we need a Measurement from the lock-in point on The tractor PTO and the lock-in point on The input shaft on the Implement and It's not enough in my mind to take that Measurement once we need to lower the Implement to the ground take that Measurement raise it up a little bit Take that measurement again and do that Through the full range of motion to find Out where is the shortest that shaft Will ever get to I've actually already

Done that I'm going to double check it Just to make sure but I've already Tested the range of motion I'm pretty Sure that all the way down is the Shortest the shaft will ever be on this Attachment But I know on a brush cutter as you Raise it up it's the opposite and it Gets the shaft gets shorter when it gets Higher so let's get our measurements and Then we'll go inside and work on the Shaft so I'm putting my tape measure on The the Locking Point here And running it down here You get 33 and a half inches Let's see if we can get it to index any Configuration that gives us a shorter Number Okay Foreign I actually said this wrong earlier we Measure from where the splines lock in On this end But the other end we need to measure To the end of the shaft So because you have to be able to have One end locked in and then get your PTO Shaft in front of the PTO on the other Side So minimum there is 32 inches not 33 and A half so let's go take a look at the PTO shaft and get it cut to where it Collapses below 32 inches So we've established that from the

Lock-in point on the PTO shaft on the Implement To the end of the PTO shaft on the Tractor should be 32 inches We'll take our tape measure here 32 and a half I've watched a few other videos of guys Doing this a lot of guys say when you Get your measurement of what it should Be just for a margin of error because What if there's a situation where that Collapses further than you think it will That'd be a good case to have a little Bit of play and not be that close to Bottoming out so we want 32 inches and We really have 32 and a half here I'm going to cut two inches off of this Shaft Now I think before I do my next measurement I'm going to remove these plastic guards Because I want to see what the max Extended length of this is With the important focus on making sure We still have an overlap so to do that I'm going to take the two halves apart I bet all the different manufacturers Have a different way to remove this Guard but on mine I have a single Phillips head screw into this end of the Plastic and after I take that screw out I can rotate this And Then the guard slides off of

The actual shaft So I'll go ahead and take the other side Apart Okay so We take our measurement the same way From where it locks in to the end of the Shaft Fully collapsed I get the same number a Couple people cautioned me not to assume That this shaft was the same length as The guard but in my case it is the same Length Okay so one key thing to remember is That if I cut two inches off of this and Two inches off of one side of the PTO Shaft it doesn't shorten it because These two pieces both bottom out inside Of the other one Same thing with the shaft So if I remove two inches here I remove Two inches here That that goes for the guard and the Actual metal shaft So I'm going to remove two inches we'll Start by removing two inches off each Side of the cover Okay so this shaft is 18 inches I think We want one third of that to maintain an Overlap so we're gonna say six inches Down this shaft right here And put a mark At no point do we want this to extend Past six inches Okay so

This is the longest This is the longest we ever want the Shaft to be extended and we're at 47 From 32 that means we have 15 inches to Play with really So it's it's important to make sure that You don't cut so much that you're going To lose the overlap between these two Shafts All right so we're gonna mark this Two inches Foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Just So I really didn't want to grind this I Wanted to use a hacksaw Or reciprocating saw and not get this Hot But Hacksaw and reciprocating saw would Barely even scratch this I went and got a new blade And it just this is a really this shaft Is dramatically harder than the larger Outside shaft so I'd already cut that That shaft and this one was too hard for The way I wanted to do it so I had to Had to go get the grinder and get it Done one way or another it's important That these two shafts slide freely Inside of each other so I need to get a File and remove all the Burrs inside and

Outside of both shafts Thank you Foreign So I was a little bit surprised that This shaft was different than any of the Other ones I've seen but it still worked Out about the same and I think this is Going to do exactly what I needed it to And you'll see me out mowing with it in The next couple days so I appreciate you Taking time to watch the video I'll put Links on the screen to a couple more of Our videos and I'll see you next time