How to make a mower deck run in reverse

I won't show her this response

First up, thank you Jon, I have no idea how you got Caroni to respond to your email. I'm still waiting.

You're welcome Zuffen.  I love a good internet search.
I've emailed you the complete parts listing and deck diagram.


 

Found this out when I put the crown wheel on the wrong side of the pinion in a tractor. 3 reverse and one forward. Forgot about the bull gears reversing the drive. Same goes in early VW Kombis.
Yes Morris
I believe this reversing the crown wheel was common in CAT (and likely others) dozers clearing scrub. Plenty of grunt pushing up, plenty of speed backing up and pushing again
Cheers

Crownwheel positions?

I have a custom vehicle fitted with an LS3 that is mounted facing backwards in the tray.  The drive is via a Nissan Patrol transfer case I grafted onto the back of the auto, driving off the old front drive flange.  It drives down the side of the engine to the diff which is heavily offset to the passenger's side.

All was going well until I realised it was going to have 12 reverse gears and only 2 forward.

To overcome that I spun the diff centre in the housing and made a bar to align it all and drilled and fitted studs to keep it aligned.

All went well until I went to slide the centre into the housing and it was then I realised the housing was shaped for the crownwheel, so I had to cut the back off the diff housing and rotate it 180degrees so it would all work.

The diff now runs on the coast side of the gears and has done happily for 12 years with 500hp going into it.  The car can lift the front wheels on the street.  It's an ICV and fully registered.

I know a bloke that was attempting to turn his Bedford front engined bus into a rear engine.  He rotated and spun the diff, had the engine and gearbox in place.

However, rust beat the gantt chart.  (not that there was one.....)

Francis Birtles in 1927 crossing the Naga Hills into Burma not only took off his wheels for lower gear but reversed the crown-wheel in the diff of his Bean 14 to get through the mountains.

 

The early international s you could take the crownwheel /diff assembly turn it over onto the other side of the pinion and get five reverse and one forward
Sarge had an inter loader they built on the back and reversed the seat and controls the first cotton pickers inter made were mounted on a reversed farmall
Bluey

I've read the book on Birtles but don't remember and can't work out the advantage of having more reverse gears?  1st would still be the same and I assumme you would lose traction due to weight transfer.

It makes the single forward gear go through the reverse gear in the gearbox which is lower than the original first. The accidental gain of 4 reverse gears was not the aim.

I too thought the tyres might have given better traction than the small diameter drums and he would have been better off using the chain as tyre chain but who knows? Looking closely at the photo the chains look like proper wheel chains with the twisted links. I wonder if he persisted or went back to normal after the photo?

Hi,

any advantage of running on the drums I would have thought would be negated by the axle and springs dragging in the mud.

Terry