I have a question or two of my own regarding my 129, which had a couple of issues when I "shook down" the mower today.
First issue seems to be a "busy" spring loaded tensioner on my 48" mower deck, it seems to be bouncing back and forth a couple of inches or so. The spindles are in good shape, but some of the pulleys got a little rusty from setting, along with some bends from trying to lever them off, though I made some attempts at the time to bend things back the way they should go. How much is normal? I remember the 42" deck on the 102 used a fixed tensioner.
The second problem is loosening head bolts. I've run the motor about 10 hours or so since I re-ringed it in the fall, and have retorqued the head bolts already. While running around the yard a bit today, I had one come loose, the engine started making tapping noises and losing power which tipped me that something is amiss. I tightened the bolt, which seems to have fixed it for now, but I have a feeling I will be replacing the head gasket in the near future.
One problem with this motor is that it lacks the studs in the block, so I have to remove 2 head bolts to remove the exhaust heat shield. I know it ain't the best thing in the world to do, so I'm actually thinking of installing studs in the block so I don't have to remove the head bolts to remove the heat shield. How hard is it to remove the studs from another block, and do you normally use Loctite or something similar to set them?