Making a 6710 Assembly Latch and Shaft that fits a GT-14 and 48" mower deck when a middle Tach-O-Matic is installed

[BurtB 88]

Part 1 of 4 parts.

 

Thanks to @daveoman1966 and @pfrederi for their assistance and pictures!

 

Caveats:

You may see Romex being used as extension cords. I know this is bad, I'm about to completely rewire my garage and this is temporary. Just assume that Smokey the Bear appeared unto me, sighed, and gave me a stern lecture on why this bad and I felt really bad and guilty.

 

My welding is terrible. I know it's terrible. Dam it Jim, I'm a machinist, not a welder. I've watched the videos, whip and pause, yadda yadda. I just need a lot more practice and all the advice in the world won't help. My metal hot glue works gud enuf.

 

My garage is in a pitiful state. We just moved here and I'm prioritizing what has to be fixed first.

 

Tooling:

Required: drill press, silver and deming drill set, angle grinder with (grinding wheel, cuttoff wheel, sanding wheel), and a stick welder.

Nice to have: bandsaw and bench grinder

 

Material: 1/4x2" rectangular bar, hot or cold roll, 1' long. 1/2" diameter round bar, cold roll preferred (I made hot roll work by spinning it down on my bench grinder, it was what I could easily get ahold of), 1' long or less. 1/8" 7018 weld rod or whatever.

 

Drawing:

 

This is what we're attaching to on the 48" deck, The stock Tach-O-Matic plates fit on the 3/4" portions of the mount, our hitch lever fits on the 7/8" portions of the mount:

 

Cut 6" long plates:

 

Choose and mark one of the long edges as your reference surface and clamp together:

 

Tack them together (this is so we can match drill them):

 

Upload limit reached. End part 1.

 

Edited September 8 by BurtB
Added part 1 of 4 to top of post

[BurtB 88]

Part 2

 

Layout locations of holes and center punch. I use a sharpie instead of layout fluid a lot of the time, this is one of the old sharpies that smell funny. The ink cracked when I scribed but the newer sharpies tend not to do that. Can't see it in the pictures, but there is a bright scribe line. Also, that vertical line is 1" from our reference edge, it is where we use the cutoff wheel to split that section off (forgot to dimension it on the drawing):

 

Pilot drill:

 

Step drill up to 1/2" on both holes and then step up to 7/8" on the lower hole by 1/16"s with the silver and deming drills. My drill press goes down to 260rpm and I wish it went slower. This will be a fight between chatter and the drill trying to grab and pull out the chuck from the taper:

 

Cut that 1" slot into the 7/8" hole with the angle grinder cutoff:

 

Cut perpendicular to make the 'jaw' of the hitch:

 

End Part 2

[BurtB 88]

Part 3

 

Split Plates (Probably should have shaped and fitted them before I ground off my tacks) Left hand plate jaw gullet has been ground on with angle grinder and it now slips/pops onto the lifter bar of the mower deck:

 

Add angle/handle on one and cut other one short. Used some guess and gosh here, dims aren't critical:

 

Here they are on the lift bar of the deck:

 

1/2" bar is 7-7/8" long. All parts deburred, chamfered, and cleaned up to bright metal. Witness marks added 5/8" from each end where we will weld them up:

 

Plates are resting on a known pretty flat surface (aluminum stock in this case), They are both resting on that reference surface we took note of in the beginning. Part to be tacked is squared to the bar:

 

 

End Part 3

[BurtB 88]

Part 4

 

Weld them up after tack. Ugly welding but it's solid enough:

 

Test fit works:

 

Painted satin Red Apple as that was what the hardware store had in a darker red. Lever added to Tach-O-Matic and deck installed. It works! :

 

End Part 4. Final Part.