A couple of JD LA145 issues

[jinman]

I bought a JD LA145 riding lawnmower about 1-1/2 years ago. I now have 56.1 hours on the clock. The mower has been very good, but it has had a howling idler pulley on the deck for probably 25 hours. The 48" deck has three pulleys and three idlers. Only one of those idlers is spring loaded. The other two are rigid mounted. The howling idler on my deck was the first one after the PTO pulley on the engine. Since the PTO is electric, that idler gets one heck of a shock when you engage the PTO. It finally failed this last week and started binding up and causing the belt to slip/slide intermittently. My nose immediately smelled the hot belt and I knew it was time for action.

I checked JD's website and found out the idler pulley was only $8.50. The mower deck is still under a 2-yr warranty, but there is no way I am going to load the deck in my pickup and haul it 35 miles to the JD dealer and leave it to be repaired. That would mean two trips (down & back) to drop off the deck and two trips to pick it up. Since I wanted to put new blades on the deck, grease the zerks on the blade pulleys, and do other general maintenance, I just called my JD dealer and asked him to hold the part for me at the parts counter so I could pick it up on the first convenient time I came by. I didn't have to fool with the warranty issue and just picked up the idler and paid for it. That was the best solution for me.

After installing the idler, the mower sounds like a new one and works very well. I do think I'll buy an extra one of these idlers so I'll have it handy. My guess is that it will probabably fail again. $8.50 for insurance is not a bad price to pay.

I also had one other issue with the mower recently. I let it run out of fuel. Actually, the tank still had 1/4" of fuel in it, but the fuel pump couldn't pump the fuel and the engine sputtered and died. I refilled the tank and blew into the filler to slightly pressurize everything, but could only get the engine to sputter. I finally had to open the fuel line and bleed off all the air to and through the fuel pump. The pump is located on the outside of the engine on the left side and very handy. It was a very easy job to do, but was very frustrating until I realized what the problem was and what needed to be done. The clue was that the fuel filter was only half full of fuel. After bleeding, it was completely full.

In the process, I noticed the hood hinge was made so the hood can be easily removed for complete access to the whole engine. You disconnect the headlight connector and the hood can be lifted and pulled forward. It has slots in the hinge point and the hood just comes off completely. It's the kind of thing I love about this JD mower. It has some very neat features. I also love the easily adjustable seat.

 

[Dutch445]

Thanks for the detailed report,
make sure you keep your front
steering spindles greased well,
along with the axle pivot in the
center of the axle.

 

[jinman]

Thanks Dutch. I didn't know the axle pivot had a grease zerk. How did I miss that? I'll check it for sure. I keep the axle steering pivot bushings and the wheel spindles greased on a regular basis, but I've not greased the axle center pivot yet. My sweet wife bought me a Lincoln battery powered grease gun, and it is extremely handy for tight spots where you can't pump a handle. All I have to do is get the adapter on the zerk and press the trigger.

 

[shot_gun]

Jim good to hear your up and running. As a note the fuel filter will not get "full" unless you pressurize the tank like you did. The fuel filter is on the suction side of the fuel line. This is why it's not full. I would check your fuel tank cap to make sure it is venting like it's supposed to. there is a little hole in the middle of it. You should be able to blow through it.

 

[jinman]

Thanks for the detailed report,
make sure you keep your front
steering spindles greased well,
along with the axle pivot in the
center of the axle.

Dutch, I greased my axle pivot this morning. I would probably never have noticed that zerk if you had not mentioned it. Thank you very much!

Shot_gun: I looked at my fuel filter this morning and it has a tiny air pocket near the top. This does appear to be normal. The mower starts and runs normally, so my guess is that it is just normal to have to bleed the lines if you let it run out of fuel. I WILL keep my eye on the fuel cap vent, but I don't think that had as much to do with this problem as my just letting the mower run out of gas.

 

[jinman]

My fuel problems are continuing on my mower. Yesterday, I wanted to move the mower to work on the new canopy I put on it. I started the engine with almost a full fuel tank. After about 20 seconds, the engine started sputtering and died. I tried to choke it to keep it running, but it just died. It would not even try to start as the engine just cranked and cranked.

Thanks to Jwentworth in another thread, I found out that the carbs are equipped with a fuel shutoff solenoid. I checked the solenoid and it is working normally. I've been thinking my fuel pump may be bad, so I took the hose off the output side and cranked the engine over. Fuel shot out of the outlet just like you would expect. That's working normally. Next, I took off the breather cover and poured a little fuel directly into the carb. When I spun the engine over, it cranked right up and ran normally for a few seconds.

So I'm thinking I'm going to have to clean out the float bowl after disassembly of the carb, but on a lark, I put my hand over the air inlet for 100% choking. Even with the choke set to closed, some air will get by, but none got by my hand. Suddenly the engine sputtered and came to life. I lifted my hand and the engine continued running normally. When I shut it down and restart it, it fires instantly.

My guess is that I had a speck of trash that got sucked into an orifice and plugged everything up. My complete choking developed enough vacuum to suck it out. However, there may be more trash in the bowl just waiting to give me grief. The good news is that the hood lifts right off and the carbs are right out in the open for easy access. If it happens again, I'll do the cleaning chore, but I'd like to wait until the end of the season when I can do this at my leisure and not on a day when the temperature is 102. At least I know that my fuel pump is working fine.

 

[Dutch445]

sometimes some carb cleaner, sprayed into your hose going into the carb, will help with some crud in the carb. pull off the hose near the gas filter, drain the gas out headed towards the pump, the fill it with a good carb cleaner. that way it
runs thru the carb, not just thru the air intake.

glad it's running better, very possible something had some
dirt and was not getting the right gas. usually these engine
issues are fuel related, not mechanical.

 

[jinman]

It's been a few weeks since I posted about the fuel starvation problem in my carbs. It turns out that I had problems again after mowing my 1/2 acre yard two more times. The mower stalled and refused to restart even with manual choking as before. It did fire right off when I poured a little gas down the carb intake. The problem did not go away when I removed the gas cap. Removing the hose from the front of the fuel pump also showed me that fuel was flowing fine into the carb. My problem was inside the carburetor, probably trash in the float bowl. I could hear and feel the fuel solenoid working, so that seemed to be okay.

I decided to remove the whole carburetor and intakes. Of course, these things never seem to happen when you have lots of time, so I hurried through the job and didn't take pictures. I found the carburetor mostly clean with very little residue, but what residue was there was black and fine grained. I cleaned everything I could see and checked the operation of the float valve and fuel solenoid. All looked good, so I reassembled the carb and put it back on the engine. When I completed the job, the engine roared to life normally and ran perfectly. I called it good and mowed my entire lawn with no issues.

After this, I mowed again and even posted in someone else's thread about how I had cleaned the carb on my B&S engine. I was sure I had found the problem. Well, I spoke too soon. Last week, I started the mower and drove it about 50 feet when suddenly it stalled. Nothing I could do besides pour a tricke of gas down the carb would keep the mower running. It was cleaning time again. Remember, my mower is still in warranty, but I don't know any warranty that will pay for cleaning trash out of a carburetor. I either have to do this myself or pay to have it done. This time I decided to do it myself and take some pictures.

Before removing the carburetor, I took off the whole hood for easy access. You only have to disconnect an electrical connector and then lift each side of the hood upwards and pull forward for it to come off. It doesn't require any tools. The rest of the pictures below show how to remove the engine cowling. After removing the inlet screen on top and six bolts, there is one screw to remove below the air cleaner filters. Then, the cowling lifts up easily so it is not in the way for removing the carburetor.

 

[jinman]

Next to remove the carb. There is a crankcase breather tube on the rear of the intake as show at the point of the screwdriver in the first picture below. This has to be removed before the carb comes off.

Next, there are 3/8" by T30 star socket fasteners holding the intake to the head. I used a 3/8" open end to break these loose and then the T30 for quick removal. You also need a T20 star wrench to remove the choke cable. That's all there is to it. My carb came off with no damage to the red o-ring seals to the engine intake. There is one throttle link under the carb, but it comes off by simply turning the carb and carefully unhooking it. The fuel solenoid is easily unplugged also.

 

[jinman]

After the carb is off, it's a matter of carefully opening the float bowl and cleaning orifices. The first picture below shows the carb turned upside down and the two screws that hold the float bowl. These are probably the two tightest screws I found. You need a large flatblade screwdriver or a large phillips to make sure you don't burr the head on these screws.

After removing the bowl, and turning it over, the next picture shows how the fuel intake works. there is an o-ring that seals around an inner sump inside the bowl. Fuel from the outer bowl is only allowed into this sump when the fuel solenoid is energized. The outer sump fills by action of the float and float needle valve. The o-ring must seal for this to work properly; however, if the o-ring does not seal, it should not cause the mower to stop running, it should just let fuel bypass the solenoid valve.

The tower with the two orifices and o-ring is removable with two screws. At the top of the tower is a 4-o-ring assembly that is very critical. This must seal for vacuum to draw fuel from the float chamber.

Flipping the carb over reveals a cover plate for the carburetor orifices that feed into the intake. This cover has three screws and can be carefully removed without damaging the gasket.

After getting everything apart, I used Berryman B12 Chemtool to clean the carb and all parts and orifices. I wiped up all residues and made sure the fuel solenoid was working by plugging in the connector and turn the key on/off a few times while watching the plunger. I also put fuel in the other bowl around the sump and watched it flow into the sump with the solenoid engaged.

After cleaning, I installed everything in reverse order but put a thin coating of litium grease on all the o-rings to help seat them again. I also did that on the gasket above the orifices. I also put on a new fuel filter and cut the old one open. The original filter was full of the same black power that seemed to be inside the carb float bowl. I think this is just manufacturing residues that are not cleaned well. I don't know how else to explain it. This is all I have ever found in my carb and it seems to the the clogging culprit.

The mower again started and runs perfectly. Is this the end of the saga? Who knows? Am I sure there was no water in the fuel? Not really, but if it happens again, I'll remove the fuel solenoid and drain the float bowl first to see if that makes a difference.

All-in-all I think this was a pretty easy bit of maintenance, but it is frustrating to have this problem crop up repeatedly on this mower. When I don't have a fuel feed problem, the mower runs great. I'm still happy with it overall. I probably wouldn't be so happy if it weren't so darn easy to work on. In that regard John Deere and B&S have done a superb job.

I hope these pictures and my ramblings might help some others who experience similar problems.