OK ... yesterday I got a wild hair ... and I did the unthinkable. As I was looking at each individual part of this mower, I realized that many of the joints were stuck, and needed to be cleaned and properly lubricated. This included the intricate lifting assembly. I started by taking the sickle bar aparts as much as I could (still have the 3 bolts that hold the main yoke shoe that wouldn't budge).
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| Breakdown of the outer shoe. Skid, shoe, grass board holder, and the bar |
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| The other end of the sickle bar. Yoke shoe still attached, wear plates and the skid plate. Note the 3 bolts I could not get to budge. |
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| I removed the ledger plate that was sticking up. You can see the rivit sticking up. |
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| The sickle bar |
Then I moved over to the mower, and once I started taking off stuff, I couldn't stop. Next thing you knew, I had a stack of parts, and a bare mower.
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| Who knew an old toolbox could make such a handy part holder. |
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| You can see the Yoke and push bar here, as well as the tilt lever and part of the lever assembly. Note that I still haven't been able to get that yoke pin out. I'm going to have to drill it and find a press to push it out. |
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| A pile of parts. They are all important, and must go back together the same way. Can I get them back together, without extra parts? :) |
Most the stuff was easy to take apart, and I always put bolts and pins right back where they were to make it easy to put back together. I even drained the oil housing, which was mostly water thanks to me not bolting the lid on tight.
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| You can see lots of water, and a little oily sludge. I bet this baby is ready for some good oil in her! |
Once it was all apart, I laid it all out on a sheet of plywood. I tried to lay the components that hooked together near each other to aid me in re-assembly. Once again, I can't say enough about how awesome it is to have The Horsedrawn Mower Book by Lynn Miller. I couldn't do this without it.
One special note that I learned myself. HOW DO YOU TAKE THE YOKE OFF THE PUSH BAR??? Well ... it's threaded on. You have to spin the yoke around the push bar (lefty loosey) and it will come off. I couldn't find that anywhere, and figured it out. Mine was stuck good. What I did was to re-install the push bar to the mower (slide the end of the bar back in its socket, but from the top, so the push bar rested on the frame, and the yoke was at my chest level). From there I stuck a piece of rebar through the yoke pin holes, applied some PB Blaster, and used all the muscle I had to rotate it. It wasn't easy, but it slowly came. WOO HOO!
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| a bare mower. Wow ... looks so simple. :) |
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| In this pic are the seat, tilt lever, clutch assembly, stay bar, lead bar, push bar, sickle bar, end shoe and skit, and sickle blade. (also on the top right, is the side draft bar, and the hitch assembly. |
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| From L to R; Side draft bar, yoke lift part, yoke, lift assembly, s hook, tilt bar, and across the top you can see the lift lever. |
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| From L to R; Lift lever (across the top), yoke, lift assembly, s-hook, tilt bar, main lift bolt, spring, main lift plate, spring, foot pad bar (used to drop the mower). |
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| And here it is. All the parts to my #9 broken down. NOTE: The Golden Retreiver pup in the background with the big cow leg bone is not part of the mower, but she does make good company while working. :) |
Now that it's broken out, I just have to take it piece by piece and wire brush, clean, and paint. I also need to decide what I'm going to do about the sickle bar. Really, I could just buy all new guards and be done with it. Maybe I'll save my pennies and do that.
IH #9 Mower Page
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