Which mower deck do i use?

[upsguy]

I have had my snapper lt 16 for about 11 years without much of an issue. This year however I have been chasing repairs all summer. This repair has to do with the idler pulley and the belt tensioner. I have a 41 inch deck and the both are connect using a bracket. The deck has rusted thru and the bracket broke away from the deck. While shopping around for a used deck I found a guy that has an lt12 to pull parts from. The deck was quite a bit smaller than the one i got, but the mechanic assures me the smaller deck is interchangable. So my question is this should I just try to get it welded or change it to smaller deck.

 

[TedLaRue]

Consider the overall condition of your mower deck. Is it so badly rusted that other critical parts are going to fail soon? And what condition is the smaller deck in?

Welding a plate to your deck to replace the section that is rusted out should not be difficult, but if the bracket that connects to that part supports sheaves (pulleys), you might have a small belt alignment problem. If the new plate is welded to the top surface of the old deck, then the bracket it supports will be misaligned (too high) by the thickness of the new plate. Just something else to think about.

If the new plate is welded to the bottom of the deck, then you could probably use washers between the new plate and the bracket to correct for the misalignment.