Hello, all!
What an awesome thread! Excellent work by everyone who took the time to learn and post. Awesome.
I'd like everyone's take on a slightly different but related matter concerning the K46. I'm about to take delivery of a Husqvarna 24V42LS with a K46 and Hilliard auto-locking diff. From the perspective of present owners, and especially those of you who've actually dug into and revived damaged K46s, what should I, as a new owner, do to prolong the life of my new transaxle?
For example, was anyone able to pin down specifically the failure mode? IOW, what started the cascade of damage that led to your failed transaxle? How would you avoid that problem in the future, if you could?
A complication I see here is the 3-year warranty from Husq. Do I tempt fate and go with the "lifetime oil" (ha ha) proposition, or do I do the smart thing and drain it after 10 hours and refill with good quality synthetic 5W50, at the risk of voiding the warranty? As I see it, NOT changing the oil at 10 or 20 hours and then every 100 hours is a bad idea, but if it's going to void the warranty then....? So if I DON'T change the oil, have I set the transaxle up for a failure soon after the warranty expires?
The first thing I'm going to do when it drops onto my driveway is crawl underneath and look for the drain bolts. Maybe they've seen the error of their ways and have included them on recent production. (ha ha)
What would you guys do?