My Brush Hog is Shaking Like it's the End of the World

I get a fair amount of questions about brush cutter vibration, as do service managers anywhere they're sold. The general situation is, a person has been brush hogging, they hit a big rock or log, there's a tremendous racket, they turn off the PTO and drive away from the obstruction. Then, they get ready to cut again, kick in their PTO and the cutter shakes violently. It's such a scary situation they'll usually turn off the tractor and run away, convinced they're completely destroyed something. Usually its a real easy fix. What's happened is pretty simple. The blades pivot on big bolts, and one of them is nicely tucked under another one. It will literally make the cutter and tractor shake so badly that you may think the world has come to an end. All you have to do is get them separated, be prepared to use a good sized hammer. The machine can also shake if the shaft that the blade pan attaches to gets wollered out. "Wollered" may be a word that only those of us of Appalachian descent folks what means. Basically if the splines get worn to the point that allows up and down movement of the blade pan, you're going to get a good vibration. The same can also happen when a U-joint on a PTO shaft gets worn out. Regardless of what the source of vibration is on a brush hog, it's a sign of a problem and shouldn't be ignored. I've actually seen cracks in the welding on the top of the deck mainframe that were caused by continuing to run the machine after a vibration started. You don't want to get to that point. Also in this video we discuss the stump jumper. That's a big disk that the blades spin from that helps guide the cutter over a stump if one is encountered in the field, versus hitting them straight on. If you're cutting big open fields with no possibility of finding hidden stumps, you don't need to worry whether the cutter has one or not. With me, going into the timber a lot, I need that stump jumper. SUPPORT THE TRACTOR MIKE CHANNEL:   / tractormike   Visit the Tractor Mike website: http://asktractormike.com/ Subscribe to YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/tractormi... Visit Facebook Page:   / ask-tractor-mike-312112962245304   Buy Stuff I Use: https://www.amazon.com/shop/tractormike Copyright 2018 Tractor Mike LLC