The making of a rock shaft

I'm putting this in here so people can see how we make the rock shafts and put a link in the store so they can see as well.

1st up make the main rod. Cut the length, finish and bevel the ends, and cut the E-clip grooves, it is all done on our lathe from 3/4 rod stock. The tooling for the E-clips was made here from a block of Latrobe Steel 1/2" Crusader stock. I was making some rear hitch rods at the same time, they are the longer ones in some of the pics. The flat pieces are cut by a friend with a CNC plasma cutter.

Next up, make a jig so they are all assembled correctly for rod position, depth, squareness, and lift plate direction. The are put in the jig, spot welded, then pulled out of the jig to finish the welding.

Then any weld spatter is removed then they are blasted and painted. Add a few good Made in USA oil impregnated bronze bushings and E-clips and voila lol.

When installing these there is an order to things to make things easy.

Left side and right side of tractor are determined from sitting in the seat position.

Remove rear seat, unplug any safety switches and tail lamps if equipped, and seat pan. Test bushings for fit into the holes in the fuel tank mount. Most times the fit is very tight and paint has to be removed from the fuel tank bushing mount holes. This can be done with a knife, box cutter, small round file, etc. Make sure the right hole especially is easy to slide the bronze bushing into, it will be important to make the final step easy.

Clean paint off of the rock shaft to the E-clip groove on the left (short side), and about 1" past the E-clip groove on the right (long side), then apply light grease to shaft where the paint was removed. Install the bronze bushing only in the left side fuel tank mount hole.

Slide the bronze bushing onto the rock shaft right side (long side) a few inches. Guide the rock shaft into the right side fuel tank mount hole far enough to clear the left bushing, then move it to the left into the left bushing. Lastly, slide the right bushing down the rock shaft into the right hole and install the E-clips.