There I Was Mowing Right Along When...

Great day to mow so there I was mowing along with my "new to me" 42 RD deck on the C-101. Made a turn and saw a strip of grass that was untouched by the left hand blade. Look down and the spindle is turning, don't smell smoke, drat! Shut down and reached under the deck to find that the blade was spinning free on the shaft, double drat! I've mentioned before that I hate to pull decks, well, here we go again. Pulled the deck and saw a good half inch up and down slop in the spindle shaft in question, zipped the nuts off both ends of the shaft, removed the blade and pulley and took a look. Chunks of what was left of the PN: 106070 spacer-seal littered the top of the top bearing, which amazingly, still turned free. The seal was non-existent as you can see from the pic, nothing left but the shell. Had to finish mowing so I ended up cannibalizing a spindle from a 42 SD and ordering a complete set of bearings a seal and a seal-spacer. Never had a failure like this. While the deck was down I did install a new set of mulching blades in Glen Pettit fashion with 2 blades per spindle so at least some good came from the experience.

Geno fortunately the shaft and housing are okay, even the bearings feel good but are getting changed out anyway because of all the trash that fell through.. This winter it gets a complete overhaul.

The double blades seem to be doing a good job but I still need to fine tune the deck a bit, more to come on that subject later. I will say that the pto clutch needs to be good and snug as does the drive belt, that's a lot of mass to get turning all at once, a good test of governor response for sure.

GT 14 wrote: Looks like you had plenty of grease in there. Do you use moly or is that tinted from the metal.
I will be interested in the blade report as well.

Good catch GT, I've always been a fan of moly grease and use it on about everything.

But as we know, it's a son of a gun to clean up after.