There’s a number of small tractors that have arrangements to drive something off the front. Wayne has taken advantage of the higher RPM of his PTO to engineer a simple and cost effective solution. Instead of speeding up the PTO speed, Wayne’s problem was slowing it down to provide the required 1800 RPMs. This allowed him to use a rather large pulley right out of the Grainger catalog and a single vee belt.
Wayne can tell the story best, so here’s some cut a paste from his emails. Do note that metric bushings are available right off the shelf for this pulley. Grainger might stock same, Applied Industrial does for sure.
Hi George,
I am going to send you some photos on separate emails so I am sure that you receive them. My generator project is almost complete except for the voltage control that we discussed. The tractor that you will see in the photos is a 22 HP diesel. The power take off pulley in the front of the tractor runs approximately 4500 RPM. I had to use a rather large pulley on the generator to obtain 1800 RPM. I got the pulley from Grainger and the Grainger stock number is 2L292. The bushing for the pulley is a 1 5/8″ ID bushing and the stock number is 2L250. I had to have it machined out to accommodate the 42mm shaft on the generator. The bushing had a 3/8 keyway so I just machined 1/2 of the key to fit the keyway. The rest of the project is rather straight forward. The electrical box mounted on the frame is an outdoor box with breakers installed for both the 120 V and 220 Volt outlets. I put 2 120 outlets on one side of the winding and 2 outlets on the other side in order to divide the load. I will mostly use the 220 outlet because that matches my input to the house.
When we started it up it worked without a hitch. In fact, my wife was watching TV with all of the lights on in the living room. The furnace blower was running and all of the lights were on in the basement. I started the generator and went in the house and threw the transfer switch and my wife didn’t even know that anything happened because the TV didn’t even flicker.
All of the equipment for this tractor (including the generator now) attaches in about 30 seconds. You just drive into the equipment and it snaps in place. Then you attach the belt and you are ready to go. I didn’t show you in the photos but the generator assembly raises up, by hydraulic,about 12 inches for transporting.
The bottom line is that the generator worked perfectly.
Thanks again for all of your help. If you want to use any of this material feel free to do so.
Wayne Thomas
PS. You may want to look at our web site www.thomastreefarm.com
Thank you for sharing your project with us, Wayne! After seeing your work, I remember a Bolens tractor I had where you could take power off in the same way. I think your set up would have worked well on that little tractor too. Your project will spark ideas for other readers, and I learned something new too.