Another project this winter was to rebuild the closing arms on the drill that we use to plant soybeans and wheat. The original John Deere design was not well thought out and after a few years of use (well, more like 20 years) the closing arms flop side to side and don’t reliably close the soil over the seed.
We purchased a well thought out rebuild kit from the excellent R K Products. To install the rebuild kit we first had to cut the roll pin off that held the closing arm on. Then we had to grind the weld off the pivot pin on the closing arm and punch it out by smacking it smartly with a sledge hammer.
To put the rebuild kit on we had to weld in a new pivot pin, then slide it back into place with the appropriate wear plates and washers and torque it all down to 85 foot-pounds.
And then repeat for all 24 closing arms on the drill, 12 of which are the ‘front rank’ which means to work on them you crawl underneath the drill to get to them. Great fun!
The final product looks like this.
As you can probably guess, the new parts are the shiny brass colored ones.
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