John Deere Tractor

Today is the hottest day in the year so far.  I started out to cut the grass.  First I edged.  And it was still relatively cool then.

Then I fired up the John Deere lawn tractor and began cutting grass.  As usual for some time now a lot of deck vibration.  But everything was working.  Just about finished cutting the entire front lawn, really not much but . . .   And then the vibrations got really bad.

I knew then that I had ball bearing failure in one of the mower deck blade spindles.  A spindle has a large pulley on top, a disk that the mower belt loops through.  On the bottom of the spindle is the grass cutting blade.  The spindle bolts on to the mower deck.

I pulled up in front of the garage and grabbed my grease gun and gave both spindles a shot of grease.  That really did not make much difference.  I pressed on and cut most of the rear yard and pulled up in front of the garage.

I got out the old instruction book and sure enough it gave instructions on how to take the mower deck off.  I got that done pretty quick, though had to take a cooling off break as I was sweating like a stuck pig.  Hot day, remember.

I parked the tractor in its spot in the garage and move the mower deck over to some shade.  Sure enough one of the spindles was bad.  I removed the bad spindle and took it apart thinking I would just replace the bearings.  I found some pretty bad wear on the internal spacer so I elected to get a new spindle complete with bearings.

I found one on Amazon Prime for $24 shipped in two days  Well I do not care if it comes in one day or three days, I do not have to cut the grass for a while yet.  I have at lease a week before that comes due.  I ordered up the spindle and will in the mean time sharpen the blades and grease up the remaining good spindle.

It will be another sweat job to get the mower deck back on but it is not to bad of job.  It looks pretty simple as I took it off.  All the work is close to the ground and that is an irritant but cheaper than taking the deck to the John Deere place to do the work.  It is after all something I can do.

And the beat goes on.