Someone Tore up Their Bush Hog!

Got a viewer question from T.C who wanted to know how high to keep the tailwheel on his brush hog when driving across his fields. You're asking the wrong guy.

A while back, I was out using my bush hog and when I got back to the barn, the tailwheel was gone. It had broken off the spindle. I had to go out in the field and find it, then take it to a buddy who is an excellent welder and get it repaired.

I determined at that time that I was doing a bad thing to the tailwheel assembly by keeping it a couple of inches off the ground when driving around. That's what you don't want to do. What I was doing was bouncing up and down on rough areas, and the tailwheel was occasionally impacting the ground with some serious downforce. Hence the failure.

So, there are three "takeaways" from today's video. First, you need to have the tailwheel in one of two places; either keep it so high it never touches the ground, or, let it down with all of the weight off the three point and allow it to follow the contour of the ground. Either way should be okay, just don't keep it slightly raised where a sudden dip will cause it to crash into the ground. You'll be fixing it like I did.

Second, if you're going to raise the cutter all the way up, go slow the first time and watch to make sure the deck doesn't bind with the PTO shaft. I've seen a few tractor and cutter combinations where that could happen and it doesn't end well. Just a slight tweak of the PTO shaft and it won't go in or out anymore, and you'll have difficulty getting hooked and unhooked.

Finally, if you're going to have to change a tailwheel, and it's held on with a roll pin, get a set of roll pin punches like the ones on this page: https://www.amazon.com/shop/tractormi.... They're inexpensive and make those roll pins much easier to remove. That's a link to my Amazon Affiliate page and anything you buy off there helps support my channel and is much appreciated.

So T.C., all the way up or all the way down with the tailwheel. Absolutely not somewhere in the middle like I did.

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