Volume #BFS, Issue #23, Page #08
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Power Take Off Remover, Installer
As he grew older, Tony Bunniss grew tired of trying to disconnect the pto from his Deere 420 Garden Tractor.
“When I was young, I had no problem pushing the ring back and collapsing the spring on the pto, which allows the steel balls to move out of the groove on the engine shaft so that the implement shaft could be slid off,” he says.
“But over time, it got harder for me to collapse the spring. In fact, it became almost impossible, and I couldn’t get down and lay alongside the mower at all.”
His solution was to build a device that improved his grip. He used miscellaneous metal, shoulder bolts, springs, bolts, and nuts he found in his shop.
Before making his new device, taking the pto off - or putting it on - could take Bunniss over half an hour. Now he can do so in a matter of minutes.
His device is green on one side and yellow on the other because the handles are detachable and only used when removing the driveshaft. They aren’t needed to install the shaft, but only to install the tool by pinching it until the notched locks are engaged. After that point, the spring gets compressed and dislodged while it’s pushed on.
“I also machined a small dimple into both sides of the knuckles to keep the set screw in place when I removed the shaft,” says Bunniss.
To remove the pto shaft, Bunniss installs the handles based on their color-coding. He then puts the tool on the knuckle, ensuring that the set screw is in the dimple, and pushes the handles forward until the notched bar locks the compressed spring and slides the knuckle off the pto shaft.
He’s the first to admit it’s an elaborate system for a relatively simple problem. “I know this is equivalent to swatting a fly with a baseball bat, but with age, I have to do things a lot different from when I was young.”
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Tony Bunniss, Webster, Minn. (glennlee1964@gofast.am).


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Volume #BFS, Issue #23