2015 propass 200 wireless belt replacement

10 + years in and it's time to change the conveyor belt.

Not as bad a job as I had anticipated.

I'll rate it as 6 out of 10 for difficulty for golf equipment repairs done in the past. 

Top dresser was used for by weekly greens top dressing (weather pending)

and tees a couple of times in season.

Then work hard in the fall after core aeration followed by a heavy closing the greens/tees/approaches up for the winter. 

Around 2000 hours. 

Working from the left side only on this unite.

Removed all bearing covers and check for bad bearings.

Side shield removed and, in my case, I had to remove the catwalk.

Next back the tension off the belt till it's very loose.

Only the front adjustments, do not move left rear. 

Remove the Allen key set screw on bearing collars on both left side bearings.

Raise dump bed up after removing spinner attachment.

On the underside remove the large shield that protects the engine bay.

My shield attachment points had lots of cracking, so I did make up angle sheet steel brackets and drilled holes in them for repair.

You can push up on the belt from underside to access the mid side frame nuts.

 Basically, remove every bolt in the red section of the hopper after bearing bolts are removed.

Note .... mark left rear back bearings location before removing those bolts. It will save you a lot of time setting up the new belt. 

Front valves cover off next and unbolted the block. 

Make note or tag the wire going to button and the other power wire. they are similar. 

Disconnect the brains.

Remove the clean out screen.

Yeah, cleaning needs to be addressed.

Or the lack off.

Techs pet peeve is not cleaning after use.

Sometimes jobs don't get completed on the same day when things come up, postponing clean, sometimes for days or weeks.

End result is sometimes sands dried and turn to basically concrete on the underside. 

You can see the shield in this pic.  

Finally removed this manual tube, so annoying.

Next remove flow adjuster and belt scrapper.

Note all the bolts are one of two size stainless steel Allen head type.

If you have long arms, you can get all of them yourself on the hopper.

Or use a helper and crack the nut side loose first.

Remove adjustment bolts washers nuts etc. Take a picture first so it gets reassembled the same.

NOTE, this front bearing you will have to slide in place before assembly.

Rear bearing mark as per picture below.

Even though adjusting front bearings will make the belt track left or right a bit, this one's really important to get it back where it goes. It will really make the track move left or right quickly.

NOTE, on assembly tighten the bolts on side frame up first before installing adjusters.

I used a sharpy marker and measured the end treads. 

After the last two side rail bolts are out and rear bearings off remove side plate along with front bearing.

In my case the nylon blocks all looked great, bearings were all good and rubbers on hopper are still in good condition.

Only needed a belt and belt scraper.  

Plus, lots of cleaning, prepping, painting worn areas while waiting on parts (about 2.5 weeks)

I wedged a piece of angle under lift frame and another to hold the rollers steady till parts arrived. 

Reassemble in reverse order. 

Adjust the front roller evenly take measurements if you like.

Before putting spinners on, run the belt and adjust so it's not tracking left or right with good tension on belt. 

Final adjustment will be made this spring with a load of heavy wet sand.

Adjust till belt starts to move.  

Done. 

NOTE, when reassembling large areas and panels I used and alignment tool to wedge holes for bolts in place and also install all the bolts loosely before tightening up a section.

 You shouldn't need it for this one but good luck and have a great season.  

Toro wireless 200 spinner adjustment Modification

We have the wireless 200 for the past ten plus years. 

I had to make a rear bumper to protect the spinners from getting hit by equipment, which worked out very well for us.

The only big complaint is the slide adjustments are really hard to work to slide spinners in and out.

Here is what I came up with for the first try. 

 

Just gearing up some scrap materials to figure out the best option. 

 Decided to go with a single center adjustment.

I drilled a good size hole through the section above and also the next plated section inside. 

Next time I wouldn't do this because I figured out it could have been attached to a larger Angle bracket. 

Angle bracket I would go with 2" next time. And weld the nut or sleeve to it. has to be a little larger than threaded rod (1/2" stainless was used)  

Pass treaded rod through angle iron hole and weld a nut on rod. Weld another nut on the front side leaving a little wiggle room so rod can still turn. That will anchor the spinner slid end.

Weld the bracket in place here. 

Using a piece of 1" angle to stiffen that pull rod frame section.

Weld a sturdy anchor section and also drill a large hole and weld nut on bracket when it lined up.

Check for any binding and weld brackets in place.

Don't cut the adjustment rod till you try it in and out to see how much to cut off.  

 This was my first attempt where this nut needed to be drilled out bigger than rod.

Before welding a T on add another nut so it can act as a lock nut after adjustments are made. 

Works pretty well, will see how it does this up coming season. 

 

JD 7500 verticutters to process cores

As most of you know on the East coast of Canada "if you want fall rain just pull out the aerators "

Having an issue after coring fairways taking way too long to bust them up with just dragging steel mat.

Sand capped fairways with bent grass.

Recycling some material back into the holes.

It's seldom if ever ideal conditions being so late in the season for this process.

This season we reversed the front roller mounts to get more room before the blades, so it doesn't jam them up as often.

Set the groomers to zero. (just touching the shop floor)

Cores were wet and did a pretty good job.

But we can do better, I think.

I know there are rollers out there for this situation but at a great cost.

A little winter project.

Ordered these front deck rollers from Vickers to try.   

A little to big so cut them in half.

Beveled the edges on grinder to match other side.

A little heat from the torch to smooth them out.

Decided to go with 5/8' cold rolled steel for a roller shaft.

cut at 25"

Drill the pilot hole first for the 1/4-28 zerk going in later. 

Using a smaller drill bit to drill in end shaft as far as I could get it. 

and another hole were the end of first hole wound up.

Tapping threads for zerk.

Blew out and installed zerk and passed some grease through.

Drill a 1/8" hole for a roll pin fora stopper.

Using 1/2 washer and holing them out in pairs for ends of rollers.

Turned out great and not as bad as I thought it would be.

Got 2 made today and installed on to see if it will adjust down more. 

Turned out great and will open up the area in front of blades for more direct chopping instead of front rollers flattening the whole space.

I'm thinking of doing the rear rollers to and using this set up just for aeration. 

 Will be a quick flip over to get the back on the regular rollers and set into the turf for our regular in season set up.

                                          I'll update next fall and see how it went either way. 

Frankenmower ... cart path grass mower

During the grow in 10 seasons ago it was getting labor intensive to hand mow and use trimmers to clean up overgrown treelined side cart path edges.

After the second season we dedicated one 7400 A mower for the job to free up staff to do other need tasks on the course. 

My idea at the time was to use this machine and save the other 3 units on roller wear and damages.

Last season we traded the unit in and were left to going back to hand mowing, the other 7400 A is now the pre fairway cut machine.

I knew this was coming eventually and had an idea to try something out.

 Looking around at my junk pile I managed to take a good engine and deck from different machine to get a base unit started.

Doing a test fit. so far so good. I love our TX gator because of the square trough access in the body I can make attachments to go on the machine. 

1.5" square tube stock 1/8 " thick make a good solid bar to attach mower too. Stick a bolt on one end and slide it through the frame.

1.5" angle from some scrape pieces to bolt to deck of mower and a hinge point for mower to be able to follow the ground.

Once I had the angles right, I tacked it all together.

Found out a little bonus was to attach a chain on mower and loop it over the snipper holder bracket so when you lifted the box it would tip mower up off the wheels to change direction. Add a stiffening rod to take some to the play out.

A little early morning try out on the back nine. Did the front 9 the day before.

Worked better than expected.

I mowed the course twice now. blade stayed sharp.

Took 6 hours total and 4 lawn mower tanks of gas.

I'm doing a few upgrades to prevent post hits on the wheels.

Easily comes off in a couple of minutes and takes little space for storage.

If you look closely left of engine is the pull cable to take brake

Some upgraded steel wheels and bolted a guard for rear wheel so if there is a strike it will deflect away without damaging the wheel.

Also have to go at a walk mow speed maybe up to 7-8 miles per hour in good areas. 

For obvious reasons I'll be doing cut and will train our best operator too.

To make it safe you would need an electric start engine (tap into gator battery) and operator seat pad switch so if they get of the machine the engine shuts down.

Maybe I'll get lucky and find a roadside giveaway. LOL  

Original build was at no new cost to us.