I took my deck off my
G1800 yesterday and serviced it. I had mowed over lots of thistles and the sticky sap just loaded up the bottom of the deck. It was so bad the blades were hitting 'stuff' caked on the deck. I chipped off a 5-gal bucket full. What a mess!
When I remove the deck, I first take off the PTO shaft. Then, I remove the drag arms off the front attach points if possible. Sometimes they will be in a bind and I have to punch them out with a drift punch. Then the rear hangers are easily removed. Finally, I lift the rear arms with the hydraulic lift and drive over the deck. The shields over the outside pulleys are very strong and don't seem to mind at all that I drive over them. It's much harder to back off than to drive forward in my opinion. The deck is a beast. I cannot imagine a heavier deck.
After having the deck in the clear, I flip it over and let the front drag arms support the deck so it is at a slight angle instead of flat on the ground. I have a large socket set I bought from Harbor Freight and a 1/2" to 3/4" adapter for my air impact wrench. A 30 mm socket is the correct size. You can also use a large hex wrench inside the bolt's socket head, but I've never done that and don't even know the size. With the impact wrench, I just hit the trigger and the bolts come spinning right out. No more fighting with the blades or blocking them is needed. Yes, if you don't have an impact wrench, you have to use a socket wrench or other method. I'd think I'd buy a cheap box-end wrench at HF and and smack it with a small hammer to simulate an impact wrench. BTW: The blades are very heavy duty. They are twice as thick as the ones on my John Deere mower.
The deck has no zerks on the bottom and the topside has four zerks: One on the left side spindle (visible through a hole in the cover), one on the idler pulley, one on the left side of the gearbox on the deck (it gets covered with grass/dirt and you'll have to dig for it), and one on the right spindle also down on the deck instead of in the middle of the spindle. You should also make sure that the belt tension idler arm is free to move against the tension spring.
While the deck is off, there are several zerks under the mower that need to be greased. The hydraulic lift cross-shaft has a zerk, the driveshaft to the transmission has a zerk just behind the engine where the u-joint mates to the splinded shaft. The PTO engage pivot also has a zerk as well as the lever beside the steering wheel. Also, you can remove the screen and spray some lube on the PTO cable because most of the dust boots will be broken or missing. Finally, right in the middle of the front axle, there is a zerk for the axle pivot. Mine was filled with hardened grease and I had to remove the zerk and clean it. A small metric socket set or box-end wrench set sure makes this easy. Also, if you can jack up the front end, you can rotate the axle so the zerk is in clear view. This is an important zerk to grease that is often overlooked.
While I had the deck off, I pulled my left rear wheel and changed the fuel filter and fuel pump. This is a messy job because the hose to the filter from the bottom of the tank has no cutoff. I pulled it off and put a large phillips head screwdriver into the hose to stop the fuel flow. Then, I finished my job and just removed the screwdriver and popped the hose onto the filter. After changing the front filter too, I flipped my switch on and let fuel pump up to the front filter and out the hose at the injector pump to clear the air. When I connected everything, I fired off the engine and it burped once and ran perfectly. The reason I changed both filters and the pump is that my pump has been intermittently shutting off and the engine stalls. The new pump and filters should make fuel starvation a thing of the past.
