9ft Topper shear bolt

You don’t have a soft start option for the PTO Kev? To reduce the shock when it starts up?

Jeez I would have been sure a relatively modern tractor like a TM would have it…. Maybe someone else knows??

Yes.

PTO comes on slowly then

Try a different brand of shearbolt.

I had a bag of co-op own brand shear bolts and couldn't keep them in the topper.

Some would break on start up as soon as I started to rev the tractor, more would go as soon as I hit light rushes.

I tried sparex shearbolts and it worked away perfectly.

Would you not be using 540E for the topper anyway?

I'd prefer to just have a bag of shearbolts ready even if it eats through a few of them. Unless you know for sure that you are never going to encounter anything unexpected!

There’s a huge advantage, especially now with the price of diesel. Your tractor will be only doing around 1600 engine rpm to give you 540rpm at the shaft in 540E, while it will need over 2000 engine rpm to give 540 rpm at the shaft the other way. For machines that don’t need a lot of power, like toppers, fert shakers, sprayers, vacuum tankers etc, 540E should always be used.

The rest of the equipment is fine but topping is an odd task in itself. Its a job thats incredibly variable.

You could be topping the best of pasture or the roughest bottoms.

In rough spots, shock loading the tractors 540E PTO driveline with a topper could offset the fuel savings fairly fast!

A 10.9 bolt is approximately 20% stronger than an 8.8. If you’re breaking 8.8s easily on start up maybe then you could consider a 10.9.

BUT if it’s a 5.8 or a cheap bolt with no grade stamped on it, don’t jump straight to 10.9 as 8.8 is probably good enough for the job.

Is 12.9 stronger than 10.8