A tale of mow...

[John Rumm]

knew it was too good to last. I was pleasantly surprised to find the first cut of the year I did a couple of weeks back was really easy - no damp grass clogging the mower, or soft ground for it to sink into this time.

Last week I was three quarters of the way through and the mower suddenly stopped cutting. Thought at first I had lost a drive belt, but then I spotted a 5" diameter pulley laying on the lawn. Investigation revealed that the main drive pulley on the top of a blade shaft had dropped off, and its quite substantial 24mm flanged nut was nowhere to be found.

The centre hole of the pulley was somewhat enlarged and chewed up, so it had obviously been working its way lose for a bit.

I collected the new nut and pulley I had ordered from the mower place on Saturday, that was when closer inspection showed that the pulley had a splined centre hole, and the top of the shaft no longer had many splines! I did consider just cutting down the spacer below the pulley to drop it onto a bit of the shaft that was still splined, but in the end decided that might run the belt too close to the top of the cutter deck (especially given the price they charge for belts is daylight rubbery!). So figuring there was not much to lose (other than another week ordering a new shaft), I decided to run a bead of weld around the top of the shaft between the worn splined bit and the threaded section on top. Then I slapped the shaft in my antique "hobby" lathe and turned the weld down to match the major diameter of the remaining splines. All it then took was an hour titting about with a mini drill (must get a proper dremmel!) and a couple of mini grinding wheels to hack something resembling splines back into the new metal. The result was not that pretty, but it seemed to do the job when reassembled and the nut done up gorilla tight! Even sharpened the blades while I had them handy ;-)

[Muddymike]

That's my kind of fix :-)

Mike

[Chris Green]

If you try shopping around you can often find similar/same belts much cheaper. The 'clutch' pair of belts on our Kubota ride-on mower cost £25/£30 as Kubota spares but I now get correct sized belts for about £6.

[Bob Minchin]

Good man! Nil desperandum there is always a way!

[GB]

A new set of Oki toners for my colour printer is £500-600. Or £45 for some dodgy looking clones on ebay,

[newshound]

+1, my kind of fix too

[Brian Gaff]

The person who invented Splines must have been either dim or very clever, as usually they fail and end up buggering up other parts of any mechanism that uses them. Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well no they don't usually fail,. Only when the securing mechanism comes loose.

Tapered hafts groove and woodruff key or radial pinning all fail even earlier.

[Chris Green]

... and? Good or bad?

My cheap belts work perfectly OK in the mower. Even if they only last half as long (and I think they're better than that anyway) I've still saved a lot of money.

I happen to have an OKI colour laser printer too, I use 'clone' toner and, to date, all has gone well. I agree there is slightly more risk in this case as they could (I suppose) do something nasty to the printer but my experience over the years with various (HP, Brother, etc.) printers and non-original ink and toner has generally been pretty good.

[GB]

I don't know. I only bought the printer to produce some coloured graphs for an important client. Then I discovered they were perfectly happy with coloured PDFs. So, I'm still on the starter toners!

I'm starting up a new venture, and I'm thinking why not a splash of colour for the brochure? And I've done a nice logo that looks much better in colour.

Do you have a preferred make of clone? I'm thinking that for £45 it might be worth getting some toner in and using the printer more.

It's a C5200, by the way. An extraordinary design that has four drums in a straight line. The paper gets carried along accurately enough from one to the next for it all to line up!

I paid around £250 for mine, which works out at a bit more than £1 a page actually printed! Of course, I could replace it for a fraction of that price.

[Chris Green]

:-)

I'm at the end of my 'own company', because I'm retired rather than because anything went wrong.

Not really, I suspct that most of them come from the same few places anyway as I doubt if all the sellers do the refilling themselves. I just look for a low[ish] price and a believable blurb.

Mine is an MC342 all-in-one, copy, fax, scan and print. It replaced an HP ink-jet all-in-one. I like the ability to do duplex copying of stacks of sheets, not used often but when you need it, you need it. I also use the FAX occasionally still.

My MC342 was somewhere between £150 and £200.

[Tim Streater]

Not in a straight line, I hope :-) That would make for a printer wider than my desk and with an extraordinarily complex paper path.

That's the standard combo, it would seem (Canon MX725 here).

I get compatible carts from BadgerInks who seem reliable enough. Their carts say "Ink formulated in the US" but provide no info as to place of manufacture.

[GB]

It's a bit over 500mm long. The paper path is very simple. It just slides along under each drum in turn, then through the fuser.

[Tim Streater]

The way you described it, I was imagining all the drums being on the same spindle.

[Graeme]

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

Woodruff key. That takes me back 50 years. Lambretta flywheels and magnetos. Still got my Lambretta flywheel puller, I think, and a clutch compressor, not to mention most of my metric spanners.

[tony sayer]

In article , Graeme scribeth thus

Bloody hell used to have a lot of bother with those bloody key things:(...

[Graeme]

In message , tony sayer writes

Me too, which is why I remember them!

[Huge]

I lost one of the ones that locks one of the the driven wheels on my smaller mower to the axle. Had to cut the key on the other wheel in half and use that.

I did get a replacement. I wonder where it is?