A torsional damper comprised of two stage pre-dampers was used to reduce the rattle noise generated in the PTO gear box of a direct engine-PTO driveline of agricultural tractors. It was designed and mounted to the engine flywheel to reduce the torque fluctuation-induced speed variations at the driving gears in the PTO gearbox, which were found to be main cause of the rattle noise. The effects of a hysteresis torque and a torsional stiffness of the damper on the speed variation were analyzed using an 11 degree of freedom non-linear model of the damped PTO driveline. The torsional damper was represented by a single degree of freedom model with 7 parameters. Under a constant hysteresis torque, velocity variation was reduced with decrease in the torsional stiffness of the damper. The velocity variation was also decreased with decrease in the hysteresis torque under a constant torsional stiffness. Optimum values of the torsional stiffness and hysteresis torque were obtained by the model simulation for the PTO driveline under the study. When the optimum values of the damper were used, the sound pressure level of the rattle noise was reduced by 81%, resulting in a reduction of 15dB(A). The optimum damper also reduced the engine speed variation, resulting in a reduction of 80% at the driving gears in the PTO gearbox. The torsional damper showed a good performance in reducing the rattle noise caused by the speed variation in the direct engine-PTO driveline.