The steel rod that the handle is attached to is also under the rubber straps and that steel rod is what contacts the rear arm during a forced disengagement, the straps do very little during a forced disengagement. Maybe what happened in your case is you were able to only partially disengage the rack when the pusher was stuck causing the flywheels to start turning again and the teeth to slip. If the teeth are fully engaged they should be plenty strong enough to handle the load of a jam, in such a case the flywheels should come to a stop.

I imagine the best thing to do if the pusher is jammed is shut the engine off before attempting to free it.

Been a number of years to remember but I think so.

That does not sound good, I don't know what happened there however something to consider is never try to re-engage the rack when there is a log jam, the reason is because the rack can use a bit of travel distance to fully engage with the pinion, it there is a log jam, always un jam it first.

Continued: However if the pusher was able to pull away from the jam I think then it should be fine to hit it again

@@groutaone It didn't. I couldn't get it to draw back so it just sat there grinding until the flywheels stopped after I killed the engine. I'm welding up the teeth on the rack now. Just doing a few and letting everything cool down in between so I don't cause the rack to bow. I'll sand a profile as clos as possible to the good teeth. It looks like the pinion is pretty worn down too. Hopefully it'll work again.

After using my other kinetic log splitter without a clutch I thought it worked fairly well with the exception of starting the engine, there was a bit of belt wear though but not serious, this way there is no clutch to wear out or a clutch that may not fully disengage.

@@groutaone i don't remember, the factory version has a slip clutch? If so your new version is going to hold up better

@@AndyFromm My Chinese kinetic did not have a clutch, it had an idler but I disabled the idler almost from the start.

Was it easy to get at?

@@groutaone if I remember correctly, I took the top off but on mine I guess its possible to go in through the rear

Thanks for watching.

You're silent about the fraud of putting a grease zerk on a machine that can't use grease, and you make excuses for it.

@@mikem5475 you ok bro? its the wrong bearing that was fitted aftermarket.

@@TrueBlueEG8 nope. A new bearing, having a fake grease port. I'm not okay with that

It's more like a creek

The engine still has not run under load at this time as it sits in a rolling chassis.

I don't think I would use that head as is, I would have to look at a factory Cummins head again but I suspect the seats are not ground into the cast iron but instead are inserts. I think first step would be to return it to seller, if that doesn't work then maybe check with a machine shop to see what it would cost to have that seat machined and have an insert installed, assuming your there is enough cast iron there to have it machined for such.