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I am taking the decks and some of the hydraulics off of a Jacobson HR5111 and mounting them on a John Deere 3235C reel mower. The hoped output is a John deere Jacobson hydrid that mows 134"

I bought both machines last year and am just now getting around to starting this. So far I have the John deere running and driving and it's hydraulics working to the old reel connection locations.

The Jacobson had a blown engine have the decks removed and am working on getting it ready to weld together to make 1 machine. I will load some pics soon and try to update as I build it out.

I am also using the 4 wheel drive axle from the Jacobson and mounting it on the Deere. It is partly because I am having to stretch the Dere to make the decks fit, and I want to make sure the machine has enough traction.
now this sounds like an interesting build..just in time for grass season.What is the engine on this?
Here is what I am starting with. John Deere 3235C

I went through this machine, it was driving when I got it, other than the flat tires. I changed the oil, hydraulic filter and put hoses onto the connections for the reels. I figured out how to get the hydraulics to come on and everything seems to work. The John deere is 2wd with a wide front axle. The engine is a 39 hp diesel, 3TNV84T

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Here is the Jacobson HR5111, it has a kubota V2203 rated at 49 hp. I'm using the original JD hydraulics, so I don't think it will overload the engine. The hydraulic flow for the original reels is manualy adjustable. If the Jacobson decks bog the engine down I can throttle the flow till it keeps up.

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I had a long message typed up on here and my pc died...so here we go again.

Here is where we started.

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I took two days to tear down the Jacobson. I don't know how anyone is supposed to work on these things. The more I took it apart the more I was amazed that anyone could work on it. In their defense I was servicing it from the top and it may have been easier to attack it from the bottom.

Here are some pics of the disassembly.

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You can see the condition of the engine in these pics. I have the head and the I believe all the parts. One day I will build it if I find a use for it. I will at least pull the oil pan and see how bad it is.
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You can see the mess of hydraulic hoses and wires. Best I can tell you are supposed to service the hydraulic pumps through the floor board. It’s definitely easier when you can just cut the wires and disconnect the hoses. I don’t know if my floor will ever be clean again, I tried to catch all the oil in pans, but there was also a tremendous amount of dirt and grass packed in every nook and cranny. I still got old hydraulic fluid everywhere.

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Here is the floor…..
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I wiped it down pretty good then took it out and pressure washed it. Here is how it sits now.

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I did cut the brace out of the center since this picture, the frame will wrap around the back of the John Deere rear end and weld on. I won’t have to grind on the Deere very much to make it fit. I may bolt it on if I can make it work. That way if all this fails I can put the Deere back together and sell it or at least drive it around the yard.

Here is the back of the John Deere 3235C, the frame will attach at the back of the unit.

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On the front of the Deere the old lift arms were attached by pivot rods that go through the frame. The frame doubles as the hydraulic tank so I don't want to weld on it. I plan on fabricating a bracket to attach through the existing support holes that way it is supported by the holes that were designed for loading.

The plan at first is to get it driving with the rear of the Jacobson and rear decks then worry with the front deck attachment.

Original Deere front

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Stripped down Deere front end.

BTW you can only link 10 pics at a time in one post.

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The engine on the Deere is a 3TNV84T 39HP turbo. The Jacobson had a Kubota V2203 which is 49 hp. I am using the John deere hydraulics so hopefully engine will handle the loads. The cutting hydraulics for the Deere have adjustable flow so if it is too much power at full flow I can turn them down some. Not sure if that would reduce hp input from the engine. Probably not because the pump would still be making the same flow and pressure, At least I could adjust the speed some if needed.
WOW! That is some engineering on them things!!!---glad I never had to work on one! Looks like you are making progress on it.
now I know why they catch fire so easy..too many nooks and crannies to catch grass and oil-what a combination for fire! keep up the good work-photos and descriptions of work done..nice job and interesting project
Directly under the hydraulic tank is a steel box that surrounds the universal to the pump. When I took the box off it left a square of oily grass clippings surrounding the u joints. I don't see how it could have ever been greased where it was installed. The Jacobson had 3500 hours on it. The Deere is much more open than the Jacobson, there are still some parts that are hard to get to, but nothing like what was on the Jacobson.
Looks like quite a project.
sounds like you need to add the provision for a 60qt cooler mount,maybe on a fender or close by the operator so you could pour icy cooler water on a chassis fire, or at absolute-last-resort, a beer or two..with a machine this big, mowing has to be a 12pack minimum Im sure lol..In all seriousness, nice project..we need a few new ones here..I'll try to help once it stops raining
Last night I welded the frames together, I still have more welding to do to finish the merge then I have some fabrication to do to finish up. I said earlier that I spilt hydraulic oil all over my shop.... I was welding along and I had the engine wrapped in a fire blanket. I looked down and the floor drain in the shop was on fire. It was a small fire about 3" tall. I dumped a bucket of water down the drain and went back to welding. I did fire watch it for 20 minutes. Pics to come.

Have a safe Memorial Day Weekend
Welder and torch fires are always present, it seams like! ---had a few myself over the years! --The worst one was inside a combine that I was welding on. ---I was inside it and thought it was getting kinda hot in there and when I raised the helmet -------YA, BIG ole fire in there!! I had to run and dump 50 gallons of water in there before I got it completely out!
Funny thing was that I had soaked the inside before I went in to weld! lol!!
Combines! I don't even want to talk about combines. Its been a while but there is the time the plant made us order and change our uniforms to fire resistant. I set the leg on mine on fire the first day. Safety rep for the plant got a real earful and I almost got fired. I told them go ahead, I always wanted to own a big company. Over 40 years welding and never set my clothes on fire. We went back to our old uniforms. All I got was some singed leg hairs. I thought the old neighbors were getting a little warm...….LOL!
I removed the two wheel drive axle from the deere with the intention of using the Jacobson 4wd axle. After a lot of studying the hydraulic diagrams I decided it wasn't possible to drive the 4wd from the deere hydraulics. The Jacobson energizes a solenoid on a main control valve that sends hydraulic fluid at 250 psi to the 4wd valve. Another solenoid on the 4wd valve energizes to allow 4wd in reverse. The Jacobson has a 4 port pump and the Deere only have three. That fourth pump feeds the control valve. I could have put in a rotary flow splitter to feed the control valve and made it work. It woudl have been a mess of hydraulic hoses, I aslo never ran the wheel motors, so I don't know if the leak. I also have wheels for the Deere axle, I;d have to buy new ones for the Jacobson. I decided to go the simplified approach and install the Deere axle bushings in the Jacobson shaft.

The shafts of the axle are the same diameter but the hubs attach with a pin on the Jacobson and a snap ring on the Deere. I decided to cut the bushings off and weld the deere axle ends to the Jacobson axle. There was some geometry to work out but I made it work.

Here is the rear of the loader (got ahead of myself)

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Jacobson Frame

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Frame in place for welding

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Rear pic

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Welded up, there are some more bracket pieces welded underneath

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Full Frame

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Axle frame mount

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Original Deere Axle, straight shaft. This axle had a 15/16" pin. The Jacobson had a 1-7/16" pin and had the mount made on the frame.

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I don't have a pic of the Jacobson axle, the mounts were at different angles, I had to match the angle of the Deere to the Jacobson. I think I got it all lined up pretty good.

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Welded up

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With the different axle brackets neither tie rod was the right length. I cut the Deere axle and lengthened it with a piece of 3/4" pipe.

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The connection pivot pin for the hydraulic cylinder was smaller on the deere so I cut the bracket off that was on the JAcobson and welded it to the Deere bracket. This is after I welded it up and painted. I have good clearance on the cylinder in all positions.

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It's a bit of a low rider, low in the rear

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Couldn't help myself had to put the decks back on.

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Unfortunately based on the geometry of the decks and the wheelbase of the Deere, my decks are going to be pretty far apart. I figure it will leave a strip when I turn tightly. Time will tell.

I still have to build the brackets for the front deck, haven't really decided how i'm going to fab that yet.
Looks like you really been hard at it! ---- Figuring stuff out is always the hard part!---putting it together is not so bad.---Well unless nothing wants to fit!
Your like me brother... too many irons in the fire and short of coal to keep it hot. I just inherited a new project. I'll start a new post when I get into it. no time right now. need to get the pontoon boat engine right. It's that time of year.

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If I'm reading the numbers right this is an 88.. Briggs opposed twin.. Has a rod knock hope I can find parts...
mowers..so much energy and time spent on battling something we plant in the first place..grass...I'm gonna spread mulch over my whole yard next house I buy so I don't have to mow..or just plant it all with crops like sonny
I don't have much grass here. lots of concrete...
Now I have weeds to battle!! ----- got some of them sprayed, but lots more to go. Tilled everything I could, didn't get much planted, so gonna be a long summer! Takes me 12 hours to mow around the fruit trees, down the road ditches and a little in the front yard over the septic field. --- I have to do it in installments as ole body starts giving up after about 4 hours at a time!
IT lives.... click on pic for video.

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Got to work a little yesterday. Welded up the brackets for the front deck attachment. I took the brackets from the Jacobson and cut out a 3" slot. I welded this to a piece of 3x3x1/4" tubing. On the front of the John Deere mower, there were two pivots for the reel arms. The pivots go through the front axle and are bushed and lined with brass bushings. They are welded into the frame. I am going to use the two factory pivot holes to mount the adapter beam to hold the Jacobson bracket. hopefully pics will help this make sense. I welded it up and got it painted today.

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Tubes with 1-1/4" holes already drilled.
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Got it primed and painted, will install tomorrow hopefully.

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After this I have to hook up hydraulic lines, change all the wheels on the decks, install new blades, cap some extra return lines....and I'm sure several other things then cut large widths of grass.

The decks are built like very heavy bush hog type construction. They should hold up well. I haven't put fluid through the deck motors yet, they are all supposed to be good, but who knows. If one is bad they are about $1000 each...and there are 7....fingers crossed I think they are rebuildable if one leaks.

The flows between the John Deere pumps and the Jacobson pumps and the reel motors and deck motors are all surprisingly close. I think that since the Deere hydraulic pumps (are still being used it should handle the pump load.

I got the decks hooked up and the lift cylinders. The decks by 50/50 chance went the right direction.

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I also hooked up the hosed to the decks. I was able to hobble the hoses back together for testing with the old hoses. I only have had to buy 6 adapter fittings to get to this point for the hydraulics. A lot was able to be reused between the left over hoses from the two machines. The way the fittings worked out I had to splice two hoses together to make them hook up. I do have some more fittings on order needed to connect the case drains from the decks.

I was also able to turn over the decks, everything turned smoothly, and in a bonus in the correct direction.

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I have installed new wheels on 8 of the 10 locations. I didn't have enough axle pins. I will have to make some or see if TSC has something that will work. I bought all new solid tires to replace the old ones. I don't want to have to worry about 10 little tires going flat all the time.

I am missing one blade, it fell off on my way with the mower last year, I was able to buy a replacement hub last year for it. I have to get some new blades now before I try it out.
I got all the wheels installed, put on new blades yesterday.

As I was moving hoses around I noticed that there was some contamination in the oil. I removed the decks from the Jacobson last summer. Some of the hoses were left open. I wrapped the ends of all the hoes with plastic bacs and zip tied them. This spring when I went to look at them some of the bags were ripped open and full of water. I immediately sprayed WD40 in the holes on the deck motors that were open and moved the decks back in to the shop. I took the hoes off and drain them but I'm sure the WD40 and the water was still in the motors. Any way I was pretty sure that I was going to have a contamination issue.

I ran the mower some last night to make sure that the oil would be mixed pretty good. When I drained the oil the first time it was very milky. I didn't take pics of the oil. My loader holds about 40 gallons of hydraulic fluid. The mower holds 12. I haven't changed the hydraulic fluid in the loader in 7 years, but the oil is still clean. I have a valve on the bottom of the loader tank. I would fill a clean 5 gallon bucket from the loader and pour it into the mower until full. Then run the mower and all hydraulic functions for a few minutes.

After the first flush the oil was about 70% better but still cloudy. I filled and flushed again and the third drain the oil was 95% clean ( by my guess, very little visible cloudiness. I decided this was good enough for now. I filled it the third time with new oil. I wlll change it again at the end of the mowing season.

After all that I was ready to mow something. I mowed my yard on Thursday so I don't have much to mow. My back area has previously been bush hogged, and not at all this year. The grass was about 18" tall and some parts about 3' tall. I had to go pretty slow but it cut it. No issues with the two wheel drive, it has no positive traction at all but it still pulls it self pretty good. Didn't have any traction issues.

I ended up being able to reuse hoses from both machines to hook everything up. Some are longer than I would want but they will work for now. Nice to save some $$ on reusing hoses.

Last night before my first test run at 10 pm, I drove out of the shop, after 20' I lost steering and looked back, there was a stream of hydraulic fluid shooting straight up. I was able to find a 8' hose to go in a 3' spot.

Today after I was satisfied with the oil, I decided to air up the tires. I got the last one and the stem broke when I put the air nozzle on it. So a trip to TSC later and I was able to put a stem back in the tire.

I ended up mowing some of the rear super high grass, and some other high grass areas. I them went back to the shop and made an adjustment to the hydrostatic linkage to make it go faster forward and slower in reverse. I then mowed about 7 acres straight. I had no issues other than making three laps over the same spot because the blades turned off and I didn't realize it. (It was after dark) I was satisfied that it ran and cut good. There were a couple deck adjustment in there also.

I took some videos that I will put up on Youtube in the next few days. I'll get some more pics also.

If I hard turn it does miss some grass, the way my yard lays out, most of my runs are straight. It's not perfect but I am happy with it so far.

Pics to come.

Love it when a plan comes together!!!
Leftovers

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Getting deep here. At this level of grass it doesn't want to clear the deck good enough. It ends up clogging exiting the rear of the front deck and jamming the blade. The decks are set at 2" so it's really set for my yard vs this bush hogging. It's fairly intensive to change the cut level. You have to adjust 10 wheels and pins on the front.

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Here is the width of the cut

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First cuts, on the normal part of the yard.

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It does good if I stayed in normal depth grass it cut great. I couldn't see any cut lines showing different passes. It rides great also, much better than the zero turn. The John deere has a spring mounted suspension seat. So far very satisfied.
That's a mean machine! lol!! Lotta work making it BUT looks like it does super job! ---Congrats on a job well done!
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