Senile Texas Aggie - comic relief for the rest of you

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

It looks nice. Sure you don't need some cattle in those pastures and lazing under those trees?

Or sheep or goats or alpacas or llamas or yaks or buffalo?

Yes, that might be nice. My problem is fencing, no barn, no watering facilities, and especially my lack of experience in raising animals. The only animals I have ever raised have been dogs and cats. So, yes, having cattle out in the pastures would be peaceful looking, but I don't think it is going to happen any time soon.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions.

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[Bruce]

Hey, I never had chickens until 2012 and never had alpacas until late 2016! Only house cats and some aquarium fish. Haven't had a dog since I left So Cal in 1979. And I had never put up an animal containing fence nor converted a barn stall into a chicken coop either. You can look at Latestarter's thread to see how he built his goat mansion. Water can be figured out.

"I've never" doesn't cut it with us buster!

 

[Ridgetop]

Yep, geet the teeniest tiniest string bikini you can find and go talk to all the people in the best section of the beach. Probably doesn't hurt if you act a little "teched in the head"

Several years ago several cousins and I were in her hot tub. The teenagers were in the pool. We (the oldsters) were drinking wine and having a great time. The nasty neighbor couldn't see us - the hot tub was screened, but called the police to say the teens were drinking and making lots of noise. When the police showed up my cousins and I offered to go talk to them and the 4 of us old gals stood up to get out of the hot tub. It was a great example of displacement theory for a couple of our grandchildren!

 

[Ridgetop]

Yes, that might be nice. My problem is fencing, no barn, no watering facilities, and especially my lack of experience in raising animals. The only animals I have ever raised have been dogs and cats. So, yes, having cattle out in the pastures would be peaceful looking, but I don't think it is going to happen any time soon.

If you have any local ranchers that want grazing they might be willing to put up some hot wire in return for the grazing privilege, and figure out how to get the water from your pond to a cattle tank.

 

[greybeard]

Chinchillas, Emu and Chicapoos is where the real $$ is.

 

[Baymule]

Chinchillas, Emu and Chicapoos is where the real $$ is.

BAD GREYBEARD!!! BAD!!!

 

[Ridgetop]

NO BISCUIT!

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

All,

Well, the past few days have been interesting, to say the least. On Thursday, instead of my Beautiful Gal and I continuing on trimming trees limbs, etc., from the pasture, I decided I needed to mow the overgrown pastures in the south part of the farm. I took a tank sprayer with a small mixture of gasoline & diesel with me to set fire to a brush pile that I had made last year. After mowing a small circle around the brush pile, I sprayed the pile with the gas/diesel mixture and lit it. The gas/diesel burned, but the brush pile was too wet to burn. I decided to mow the western edge of the two sections of the pasture so that we could get to the south pond without going through high grass. I didn't get finished with the portion just west of the south pond, as I ran low of diesel in the tractor. So I decided to go to the house. I also decided that I would continue to mow on the way back. As I was just about to cross the little stream between the two overgrown pastures, I heard a terrible racket coming from the mower. I knew that I had not run over any limbs in the pasture. I looked back and saw that the tank sprayer had fallen off of the tool rack I have on the tractor and had gotten run over by the shredder. Ouch! I don't know how it happened. I guess I am lucky the gasoline in the sprayer didn't ignite and blow up!

The next day, Friday, I decided to continue mowing in those pastures. About 10 AM or so I noticed my cell phone had fallen out of the drink holder on the side of the tractor. Oh, no! I immediately stopped the tractor and walked around the area where I had been mowing, looking for it. After not finding it, I decided to go to the house and get my Beautiful Gal to help me look, driving back on a path where I knew I had not gone (I didn't want to run over the phone). We both went back and looked for 30 minutes or so, never finding the phone. So after lunch I drove to Greenwood, about 20 miles or so away, where the nearest AT&T retail store was, and got a new phone. $270 + tax for the cheapest smart phone they had. Ouch!

So on Saturday I went back to the pasture to look for the phone, bringing my metal detector with me. After looking for 15 minutes or so, I found my old phone out in the middle of the grass. The phone powered on but with a low battery, so it appeared to be OK. Yay! I went back to the house and put the old phone on the charger to let it charge up, then went back to the pasture and continued mowing. Around noon or so, I went back to the house. As I was putting up the tractor, I noticed what appeared to be oil mixed with water coming out of the front seal of the gear box. Good grief! How did I get water in the oil of the gear box? I keep the mower inside the shop out of the weather, so how did water get into the gear box? After going inside the house, I checked the old phone, and was able to access the Internet via the WiFi, so it appeared to be OK.

I decided to return the new phone to the AT&T store (they had a 14 day return), and after waiting an hour or so, managed to get the new phone returned and my old phone reactivated. On the way home I decided to stop at Ace hardware in Booneville to get a new tank sprayer and gear lube for the mower. According to the owner's manual that I found on the web, the Rhino SE6 requires NLGI 000 grease for the gear box. Ace didn't have anything like that, so I stopped at O'Reilly's. They had never heard of it, either. So I decided to get 80W-90 gear oil and use that. One thing I did note was (while O'Reilly's was looking for the correct oil/grease) that I found on the web someone who had posted on a forum that he was looking for that same NLGI 000 grease and could not find it. He described the color of the grease as chocolate brown. "What?" I thought. Maybe what I thought was water in the oil of the gear box was really the correct color. This morning I decided to go ahead and siphon out the old oil/grease from the gear box and replace it with the 80W-90 oil. I saved the old oil/grease and took a picture of it. Here is what it looked like:


So I have several questions:
+ is that a normal color for grease/oil out of a shredder gear box?
+ how hard will it be to replace the front seal of the gear box? Is that something I can easily do or should I take it to a shop to have it repaired?
+ the shredder blades need sharpening badly. Should I buy a heavy duty impact wrench and sockets to remove the blades, or use an angle grinder to sharpen the blades in place, or something else?

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[greybeard]

I can't tell much from the picture..too shiny.

"
Features

Chevron Dura-Lith Greases EP are multipurpose extreme pressure greases.

They are manufactured using selected highly refined medium viscosity index base oils, a lithium 12-hydroxystearate thickener, an extreme pressure additive, and rust and oxidation inhibitors.

NLGI 000 is red in color and stringy in texture. NLGI 00, 00, 0, 1 and 2 are amber in color and buttery in texture

Altho the oem instructions may specify a specific grade, the regional or even dealerships will often substitute a different but compatible grade.
Colors can be different depending on the brand as well.

Some reading material for you. (you may have to click on the "see entire topic" button top center. )
https://www.yesterdaystractors.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=ttalk&th=569931

 

[greybeard]

As I was putting up the tractor, I noticed what appeared to be oil mixed with water coming out of the front seal of the gear box.

On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being most difficult, I would say it is a 3 difficulty. IF you have spun the u-joint on the shaft for very long when the shear pin broke, it can be more difficult because it might be harder to get the u-joint off the input shaft of the gearbox due to galling of the shaft and joint hub.

Before you tackle the job, 1st ensure the vent on the gearbox isn't plugged up. If it's plugged, excessive heat creates pressure inside the gearbox and forces the lubricant out past the seal. Often, it's just a matter of unplugging the vent and the leakage will cease. Other times, not so lucky.

Once you remove the u-joint hub from the shaft, you'll see the seal right there on the gearbox. It's then a matter of driving a punch into the metal part of the seal and popping the seal out by prying. Sometimes, I have taken a metal screw with self tapping threads (roofing screw) and run it into the metal part of the seal, and slip a sturdy screwdriver under the head of the screw and used that to pop the seal out. On some units, if there's a shoulder behind the seal, running a screw in there will force the seal out without any prying.

Nowadays tho, most input shaft seals are all 'rubber' with no metal except maybe a seal lip expansion spring on the inner side of the seal. They are even easier to pop out.