any toro groundsmaster fans on here?

[Asymair95]

Installed the baffling today.



Tomorrow I will paint the spindles. Once those are dry, the rest of the assembly can begin. Won’t be long now, and not a moment too soon, the leaves are already starting to fall here.

 

[Xfaxman]

I think that you will really like what it does to the leaves.

 

[Asymair95]

I’m hoping so faxman, my only concern is I may lose some suction because I have to run the deck so high. I have some rough areas on my property that will scalp/hit stones if I run it too low. Will find out soon I guess. Was thinking I may swap the 322 from rotary broom service to this mulching deck, as it has a pto in much better shape than the 325 I just finished. Plus, I’m still not totally satisfied with what’s going on with it’s oil in the coolant problem.

The paint dried enough to start assembly a little bit.



Got the spindles and side skids installed tonight. Next will be the rollers, and blade, then I can flip it and install the support arms and castors.

 

[Asymair95]

Little bit more done on the guardian deck.



Got a couple of new shafts for the bottom rollers, but they don’t come with the special hook you weld on to retain them in the mounting bracket. My solution was to weld washers on the end of the shaft instead.



The rollers all mounted. I shimmed them with some washers to tighten them up between the brackets.

 

[Xfaxman]

That should work :thumbsup:.

 

[Asymair95]

Got the blades on tonight.



Flipped the deck down, tomorrow the castor arms and wheels go on.

 

[Asymair95]

The left spindle is sitting a touch high. When I align the blade tips of the center blade and left blade, there is between 1/16” to 1/8” difference. I know the manual says you can shim the spindle to align the blade tips, I just don’t know if you’re even going to see 1/8” difference though in the cut quality. Any thoughts?

 

[nas90tdi]

My current blades are at least that far off and it cuts fine. I plan to realign them when I put my new blades on, but the cut is really good right now, so I didn't start fiddling with it needlessly.

 

[Asymair95]

Castor arms are on.



Tonight the castors go on, and maybe the gearbox.

 

[Asymair95]

Almost done...



Had to get all new hardware to mount the rear castor wheels. When I got this deck most of the bits were in boxes, but these were missing.



Because I’m using larger tires on the rear castors, I had to adjust the number of spacers used above and below to maintain a level deck. So far it looks like two spacers make up for the difference in tire size from the front tires to the back. So to maintain a level deck run four spacers on rear castors, and six on the front castors.



All the castors installed and greased. When I get it hooked up to the power unit I’ll fine tune the level of the deck.



New guide pulley installed as the old one was froze up. Belt is also temp installed, ready for the gearbox tomorrow.