Eatin' belts

[gregz]

I need some help. My 1988 jd855 with 60" deck. Two months, two mower deck belts. All three spindles and bearing presumed good. Two different dealer mechanics said nothing wrong with them and if it was there shop for repairs they would not replace them. After installing new belt everything looks good tensioner , etc. After a few weeks mowing belt slaps' around and under the covers and all over top of deck is all black rubber. Next step I guess is replace all the bearings? One of the dealer replaced the tensioner spring

One thing I do is mow different heights . Do I need to adjust the wheel height each time. I just use the center adjuster on the tractor and drop the height lever . I also mow with the rpm set at correct pto line on rpm gauge
Any help much appreciated

gregz

 

[94BULLITT]

How long have you owned the machine?

Are all the pulleys in good shape?

Is there any slop in the tensioner?

Are all the pulleys on it correctly?

Is the belt being routed correctly?

Are they using the correct belt?

 

[gregz]

6 months
yes
no
yes
yes
yes

 

[Bird]

The only time I've had such problems, I found pulley alignment to be the cause.

 

[Tor Arne]

Have you checked if the pulleys are aligned? Find a level or similar and place on top of the pulleys and see if there are differences in the height

 

[JD755]

The wheels are there only to prevent scalping on unevern terrain. No need to keep adjusting them. On bumps where the wheels could touch the ground the mow height there may be less than you have the height knob set. Only if grass height on those bumps is real important would you have to bother with the wheel height.

 

[alchemysa]

Mowing at too low revs will cause belts to wildly flex and snap because the blades don't have enough momentum to blast through every twig or thick tuft of grass. You should mow at full throttle. I was going through a belt a month til I fixed this issue. I had to tune the engine to get it back to recommended revs. (The most important thing was valve clearance).

 

[Bird]

You should mow at full throttle.

Amen. One thing that surprises me is the number of people who think they are doing their equipment a favor by not running at the higher speeds that the manufacturer built the machine for. And that applies to riding mowers, walk behind mowers, as well as the PTO for tractor implements. You ain't gonna make your machine last longer by running that engine at lower speeds than it was built for.

 

[chevy]

You ain't gonna make your machine last longer by running that engine at lower speeds than it was built for.

Maybe not, but mine mows fine & takes a lot less fuel when running at a lower RPM.

 

[Bird]

Maybe not, but mine mows fine & takes a lot less fuel when running at a lower RPM.

Well, it's your machine, so I don't care how you do it, since I know that I'm not going to be buying one that you've owned before me.:laughing: