Fitting tiller PTO shaft to my L3000DT

[JMC]

Back in February, I bought a 2003 used L300DT tractor. Although it is a rather simple basic tractor, it is much more advanced over the 1952 8N it replaced. Last week, I purchased a used Rotomec tiller. Reading up on tillers I learned that it is important to make sure the PTO shaft is correctly sized lengthwise for the tractor used to operate it. This particular 5ft. Tiller came from a farm with huge tractors and the owner I purchased it from told me he realized he had bought a tiller too small for his tractors, so he was selling this one and replacing it with a larger tiller. Overall, the tiller is in great shape but I need a little reassurance that my PTO shaft is OK as is, or do I need to cut it a bit for proper fitting?
I have hitched up the tiller and instead of hooking up the driveshaft, I laid a piece of flat bar across the hitch arms and placed the two pieces of the shaft side by side. It looks to me that the shafts will not bottom out (jam) into one another but I wanted to get some experienced input from any of you folks who deal with these things daily.

I am a hobby gardener (at best) and not too ashamed to admit that there are some things a 76-year-old can learn. Speaking of learning here's my first attempt to post a picture on this forum.

 

[Russell King]

See this and hundreds of other videos

I would only use the ones from manufacturer sites as good information.

There are two positions to worry about full up (longest shaft) and full down (shortest shaft). Yours looks like it is a little long to me. Remember the tiller will be lower when you are tilling deep into the soil so you may want to get the rear tires up onto some cribbage so the tiller can drop lower.

 

[Parrothead127]

I agree with Russell, it looks a tad long. Put it back together if you can then attach it to your tractor, you should be ok. If you can’t, it’s too long. Remember when you slide it up on the PTO shaft it pulls apart. Full up or full down it separates the same length,it’s at its most compact dead horizontal. I’m sure someone with more expertise will post soon.

 

[JMC]

Thanks for the links and suggestions. I watched dozens of videos and it was very entertaining. Some of these folks are very good at what they are doing, some were cringe-worthy, and others had me laughing. While I'm no farmer, I have extensive experience in mechanical work (USAF), and one of my (too many) hobbies has been restoring, driving, and maintaining vintage cars. When I was a child, I accused my parents of only adopting me because I didn't think "real parents," would make their kid use the old David Bradley walk-behind tractor my Dad bought in 1950 before I started first grade. I not only still have that tractor, but two more of those now.

Anyway, I had never had a tractor before that could creep along slow enough to use a tiller. So, I wanted to make sure I did this PTO sizing right the first time. As it turned out, I only removed 1-1/2 inches from the shaft. It was that close to being OK, but I didn't want to chance it. To complicate things further, the previous owner had kinda botched up the safety shield and I had to correct some things there to keep it functional. It got me through today's little tilling project, but I plan to replace the shield.

My walk behind tillers will still be used to cultivate certain things, but this five-foot PTO-powered tiller is going to make spring and fall garden prep much less work as I waddle off into old age.

 

[mcfarmall]

My rule of thumb is to shorten the shaft just enough so that you can hook or unhook from the tractor PTO at anywhere in the up and down travel of the 3 point hitch.