V-Belt B-Belt Dilemma

[jchamberlin]

I didn't realize I had been bitten by the Archive Bug:

First, the light of day revealed that the deck belt was disintegrating as it went around the pulleys, especially the outside ones:

At first I wasn't sure if the unexpected wear was due to fact that (1) the outside spindles had a bit of play in them compared to the center spindle, or (2) if the wear was due to the rust-encrusted 2nd outboard pulley, or (3) the wear was due to the funky idler pulley.

On Monday I picked up a new idler pulley and a new outside pulley because one of the pulleys had been "butter welded" in such a manner that we couldn't get a wrench on it. It turned out that it was actually the GOOD outside pulley, the other one was causing the real problem.

I think the one rusty outside pulley was shredding the fabric off the belt.

The wobbly idler pulley didn't help any. My #1 son was again with me for the disassembly effort Monday evening. He was the one that noticed that what I thought were two different pulleys were actually made the same way, it's just that when the existing idler pulley was installed, the washer under the bolt head had been omitted. The pulley had been able to descend over the splined "insert" that keeps the pulley off the arm down onto the deck itself. With the addition of a washer, the "insert" was once more effective, and since the old bearing seemed to be OK, we re-installed it.

After mowing again Thursday night (the neighbor's yard), I pulled the cover off and it seems to me that the belt wear has been arrested by (1) replacing the rusty pulley and (2) installing the idler pulley correctly; but time will tell.

 

[mgonitzke]

I wouldn't call either of those outside pulleys 'good'. If those two pictures are not of the same pulley, and you didn't replace both, the other one needs replacing, too. Also, did you clean out the deck after reinstalling the new belt? If so, what's all that stuff that looks like stuff abraded off of a belt?

 

[jchamberlin]

Matt: I replaced both pulleys, but I didn't clean off the abraded fiber dust. The deck worked so well and quietly (compared to my 42" deck) that I actually reached my hand underneath to disengage the belt, after setting the ratchet at the front, and did not realize that the deck was still running!