rnbrn21
Bronze Member
Today I replaced the HST fan and shaft boots on my BX24. It was a lot of work but most people with some mechanical ability should be able to handle it. I ran into a couple of problems I thought I would share. The first problem that I had was removing the black plastic knobs for the 3 point hitch lowering and mower deck height adjustment. They do just pull off but it requires a lot of force. I ended up using a pry bar. When I tried to remove the rear bolts holding the fender on I stripped the inserts out of the handles on both sides. I had to use a set of vicegrips the get the screws out of the inserts. I'm not sure how I would have prevented this problem. I have used epoxy and glued the inserts back into the handles, I won't know until tomorrow when I try to install the bolts to see if the epoxy holds. I would say that the hardest part of the job was moving the engine out of the way to be able to move the drive shaft forward. I used a piece of 2x4 with a hole drilled in it to clear the drain plug on the oil pan and lifted the engine with a floor jack. This worked pretty well. When I replaced the shaft boots a placed a spare boot on the shaft facing forward in case the front one ever gets torn. The last thing that I did was install a Bxpanded skid plate so that I hopefully won't ever have to do this again.