More mower repairs

You are welcome!

I decided to buy and fit a replacement deck belt, to replace the long-suffering one, a couple of weeks ago. Like yours, a PIX from bearing supplies norwich ltd The cheapest I could find, by quite a margin, at £24:30 delivered. I don't know if the one I removed had been the correct belt, because it seemed a deeper V, compared to the new PIX.

The problem was the old belt was being frequently thrown off the pulleys, and sometimes failing to drive the blades/slipping. I was blaming the PTO clutch for that slip, and was about to look at rebuilding the clutch, but all seems good with the new belt.

I replaced one of the drive belts, a couple of years ago, but I cannot remember which of the two.

Your suggested modification, of adding the duct directing the cuttings down to the ground, is working absolutely great. Such a simple job, but it somehow works, to stop the deck becoming choked, stops the cuttings blowing up into the air, and leaving it in neat rows. It has managed around five cuts, with not one single jammed up deck. It also allow me to check the deck is running, by simply glancing down at the grass under the duct - if the grass is fluttering, air is being blowing out by the deck, so it must be rotating/not jammed.

You suggested you could tell by the noise/vibration, but there is little difference when my deck is engaged. I very carefully balance the blades.

I remain puzzled as to how the front, adjustable U bracket is supposed to be set up - The one which hooks onto the front of the cutting deck, with the nuts to set the position? It's a weird arrangement.

I have had that on occasion - and in some cases it can end up damaging the belt depending on how / where it comes off.

Part of the problem I have noticed is that there are various tensioners that rise up on pillars welded to the top of the deck, are at slight angles to match the expected path of the belt. Over time, I noticed them shifting in angle/position slightly, so they are no longer inline with the belt path making belt skips more likely. Closer inspection showed that the metal on the deck was showing fatigue cracks close to where the risers were welded to it, meaning they were no longer fixed as rigidly. I have had to bend these back into position, and then weld up around the base to fix the cracking and restore the rigid position of the riser.

I also found cracking on the two main risers that have the spring bolts that grab the lifting arms. I suspect in this case was one too many collisions with immovable objects like the edge of paving slabs or the short lengths of tree stump hidden in the grass, that are enough to bring the whole mower to a sudden and rather abrupt stop! Again, adding more metal to these has helped.

I also found with time, that the leading edge of the deck took quiet a hammering. Partly from hitting things, but also just from general wear from spending years being dragged across the ground! This was noticeable on the underside where there is a rolled lip - it eventually wore through the rolled edge and started splitting it away. I had to insert s small bit of bar and weld it into the top of the lip to fix that.

I also found it got weaker in general and more prone to getting bent inwards toward the blades. It was getting to the point I would often hit an obstruction relatively gently, and then end up with the deck making contact with the blade tips, making a hell of a racket until I found the right bit to hammer back into place.

So last year I kerf bent some 25x5mm flat bar across the wide axis to match the front curve of the deck, and having got all bends out of it, welded that round round the front like a defensive bumper. That seems to have done the job really well!

The front one seems to be the more vulnerable of the two. It is also one I broke once when the mower was fairly new. Having said that, since then they have lasted a surprisingly long time - especially when I have had blue rubber smoke ejected from them in the past when the mower has got hung up on some obstruction and forced a belt to slip!

Yup on wet / long stuff it certainly seem better. I find I still need to take the cut very slowly, but it reduced the number of clogs dramatically. (I was only expecting to need to use it once per season, but due to weather and other enforced interruptions, had to use it again on the weekend)

I don't find that there is much extra vibration when cutting (unless working it really hard in long / wet grass), but there is certainly more noise - most of it seems to come from the vast amount of air movement through the deck / collector - rather like a leaf blower.

I have experimented with winding the nuts in a bit to see if it would raise the front of the deck any more - and it does not seem to make much if any difference. It does make it harder to refit the deck though!

The only welding I've had to do, is of the guard ahead of the exhaust, and the exhaust bracket. My own fault, because during part of the cut, I have to drive nose up to the house wall, and sometimes don't stop in time. It's too narrow a space to turn round, so I have to cut with repeated forward/reverse runs. When I get a roundtuit, intend to add some sort of buffer at the front, to protect it.

Other than that, it's a rusty wreck, from living under nothing more than a bit of lean-to shelter from the worst of the rain.

Slightly aside.. how do you get on over Wintering batteries? I have had

I used to give my tractor a mid-winter boost, but for the past ten years, I have not bothered. Not bothered to drain the fuel tank, not added any fresh petrol in the tank after winter. It always starts instantly, after winter.

The caravan leisure battery, and alarm battery get a boost without fail, every two months, just on the 13.8v built-in charger, for a couple of days.

When parked in my garage, my car gets a daily boost for 20 minutes, simply because it's electronics systems discharge the battery, whilst it is parked.

I leave it in the mower and forget about it until next year... seems to work ok so far (it is on its second battery).

I added a diagram of the belt routing for a bit of extra clarity...

-- Cheers,

John.

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Thanks, that really helps as a reference.

I scribbled some (not very clear) pencil diagrams long ago, for my own use, to avoid having to figure it all out, each time I had to work on it. The tricky one, is always the deck belt, working out where the 180 degree twists need to go.

Yeah, I was thinking as I drew that, I really ought to do the deck belt one since that is somewhat less than obvious...

ok try this:

That's clear...

It just needs the 180 twist in the belt added, and the direction of twist..

Oh yes! I had forgotten all about that. Ok added some more words and tried to reflect it on the diagram:

Thanks, I agree it is difficult to depict fully in 2D.