Dan Gonzales
Member
- Messages
- 511
- Location
- Whittier, CA, USA
The mowing deck started throwing the drive belt off on my garden tractor. I took a quick look and thought I would have to reinforce the shell around the center spindle. After taking the belt covers off it's going to be more than a single spindle. I will have to cut out a big chunk off the top of the 42" wide deck.
This is a Toro Wheel Horse setup and a replacement deck shell is $480. A whole new mowing deck is around $900. That's just too much money right now when I can mow the lawn with the rotary mower in about 3 hours.
So I'll challenge myself with some 3/16" plate steel and patience. It's about $20 in materials. The plan is: measure and record key reference points; acetylene cut the bad part of the deck off; make a template; layout, cut and drill the patch (41½" x 16½"); MIG weld the patch on by overlapping the edge on the deck.
This is the best of the three mounting holes. It only has 5 cracks radiating out.
This is the one I thought would be the only one to repair.
This was a surprise.
Here is my cutting plan.
This is a Toro Wheel Horse setup and a replacement deck shell is $480. A whole new mowing deck is around $900. That's just too much money right now when I can mow the lawn with the rotary mower in about 3 hours.
So I'll challenge myself with some 3/16" plate steel and patience. It's about $20 in materials. The plan is: measure and record key reference points; acetylene cut the bad part of the deck off; make a template; layout, cut and drill the patch (41½" x 16½"); MIG weld the patch on by overlapping the edge on the deck.
This is the best of the three mounting holes. It only has 5 cracks radiating out.
This is the one I thought would be the only one to repair.
This was a surprise.
Here is my cutting plan.
Last edited: