Mowing BK mower deck falling apart

[art]

I can't think of to many that we have had fail for any reason. The normal belt life seems to be in excess of 700 hours and even then it might be a tree limb holding the idler from working. We did hit a couple with loose spindle bolts but the vibration was picked up at about 50 hours and we haven't seen them since.

Any spindle that is constantly coming loose I'd be looking really hard at the blades to see if they are bent!

Make sure that all spindles and idlers rotate and move freely and aren't making noise when rotated!

 

[ChuckinNH]

Thanks for adding a dealer's perspective to this thread Art! So often on the Internet it's hard to tell if something is an issue, or a random occurance. I'm sure you have seen more BX mower decks than most.

 

[asylum575]

Well, it happened again.

I had the mower deck off over the winter and finally got around to installing the mulching kit a couple of weeks ago. Greased everything up and started mowing with it last week.

Today, while mowing I noticed a puff of smoke behind me and I shut down the mower and stopped to inspect. The bolts that hold the boss and side pulley were gone and the side pulley holes were badly elongated. Practically sheared. The boss was fine. Everything eas smoking hot. I took everything apart and found the upper seal also failed. The bearing sleeve looks OK. So far, about $50 in parts and alot of aggravation.

I've had those darn bolts come off about 4 times now and it has required two rebuilds.

Anyone else seen this?

 

[asylum575]

Here are a couple of pictures.

You can see two of the side pulleys holes were elongated. It was worse last time.
I have the top seal all mangled with no sign of the rubber.

I took everything apart, inspected and cleaned before reinstalling.

I'll try some loctite and see if that helps.

 

[radioman]

that doesn't look right..Something is wrong.
how does the belt look? did you inspect your shaft to see if it warped or bent?

 

[asylum575]

The shaft spins the middle the gearbox attached to the middle blade. Once that spins, the belt will spin the two outside blades.

The issue is those 4 bolts attaching the side pulley to the boss. They come undone and once two go, the pulley will get those elongated holes