72" manual soil conditioner Broken :-(

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wendirt

Member
Joined
Sep 11, 2006
Messages
9
Recently took apart the Bobcat soil conditioner I have. I bought it used from the rental fleet at a nearby bobcat dealer. What I found was very disturbing. The female spline (10 tooth) was stripped. I now know why the drum stopped rotating! The obvious fix is to replace the female spline part which is of one peice construction and is connected to a square tube that drives the drum at a cost of $1000USD +. Any thoughts or comments? I was thinking if I could find a female 10 tooth spline someplace I could drill out the old and weld in the new.. I'm looking for a machinists perspective who may have encountered same problem. Help please!
 
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wendirt

Member
Joined
Sep 11, 2006
Messages
9
DSCN1716.jpg soil conditioner broken drive image by swendirt
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Tazza

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Dec 7, 2004
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There is always a way! The biggest concern i have is why did it destroy the female splines in the coupling in the first place? Something had to be really wrong for it to destroy it. If you can find a female coupler that matches, there is no reason why a machine shop or even yourself couldn't drill and weld the new part in. Just be careful with the heat of welding if its hardened, you don't want to anneal it and have it strip out again.
As i don't know exactly how its setup i'm only guessing here.
 

TriHonu

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Joined
Apr 15, 2007
Messages
486
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I suspect that the bolts holding the hydraulic motor came loose at some point. I have a similar project in my shop. My project is the spline coupling was in the end of an engine crankshaft. The hydraulic shaft splines were fine, the female splines in the crankshaft were gone!
Source a Spline Coupling/Hub to match the motor shaft. Any machine shop with a mill should be able to do this repair. I would probably cut the hub off the end of the square tubing, put it in the mill and bore out the blown coupling. Weld in the replacement and weld the hub back on the square tubing.
Now I have to go check the motor mounting bolts on my soil conditioner...
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dkd

New member
Joined
Jul 8, 2021
Messages
1
Hey wendirt, Did u find a replacement spline that matched? I've got the same problem on an older soil conditioner and I'm trying to repair it without buying a new shaft.
 
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