Double-Grooved Pulley Mounted On Mower

Double-Grooved Pulley Mounted On Mower FARM HOME Lawn Mowers (31h,38) 33-4-36 Zachary Vahlkamp, Oakdale, Ill.: "I own two older Grasshopper riding mowers that are simple, reliable and easy to maintain. However, I had a problem keeping the deck drive belts, especially the rear belt, from falling off the pulleys. The tensioning pulley is flat and doesn't have any grooves for the belts to ride in, making it easy for a foreign object to nudge the rear belt off. "I tried to shim the pulley to center the belts, and I also replaced the belts, idler spring, and bushings in the idler arm. I even added a grease fitting to the idler arm in order to avoid premature wear, but nothing helped. The rear belt still occasionally jumped off the pulley. "One day I looked at a newer Grasshopper 7210 riding mower and noticed they had changed the tensioning pulley to a double-grooved pulley with the drive and driven pulleys on the same belt. So I bought a double-grooved pulley and mounted it on my mower. It fit with very little modification, just some æshimming' using machinery bushings I had laying around. I kept the mower's original belts, bolt, and idler arm. Three years later the mower still works good and the belts have never jumped off. "I've worked on farm and construction equipment for more than 10 years and have noticed that people tend to bend the parking lock linkage on IH 06, 56, and 66 series tractors. Tisco makes a spring-loaded replacement linkage that can solve this problem. The original linkage bends if the operator forces the handle down when the park latch is on top of the gear tooth. With the Tisco linkage system the operator can pull the park lever up and, if the park latch is on top of a gear tooth, it simply compresses a spring. If the tractor rolls slightly, the spring forces the park latch into place when everything lines up. I've installed at least 30 of these systems with no complaints from my customers."

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