Monday, April 14, 2014

This is the first Blue Bird Bed Bug report of the season.  Both machines were serviced during our winter maintenance program.  On one machine we needed to replace a clutch cover gasket that failed to the overheating of the clutch oil caused by too small of a clutch for the application. 

On the first rental of the season blade and hub detached from the drive shaft.  The drive shaft hub assembly is one of the weakest links on the machine.  This hub shaft and bearing assembly needs a major strengthening as I referred to on May 26th of 2013. The Blade Shaft needs to be 1” in diameter with stronger and wider bearing support.  The Blade shaft and hub assembly are sloppy loose right out of the box.  This assembly needs to be a one piece unit or at minimum machined too much tighter tolerances. 

  While Jody Kerr of Blue Bird believes it is too expensive to fix this problem a simple tightening of the tolerances would only require an adjustment on the boring machine that bores the blade hub.  At the Rental Show I passed out the address to this Blog to Jody Kerr and some members of her staff.  

One of the issues is the two small set screws that hold the hub to the blade.  The set screw wrench will break before the desired torque is reached.  I have come up with a solution to try to solve the problem with blades and hubs flying off.  I replaced the set screws with grade 8 bolts.  I torqued the bolts until the heads break off.  




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