37” 05-37MS Deck rebuild

[PbFlinger 64]

A few days ago my wonderful wife was mowing our in town yard on her 312-8, and when she was almost done found me & told me she’d pitched the deck belt.  I went to put it back on & found this: the L/H spindle pulley had been ironed down to where it pitched the belt. 

[PbFlinger 64]

Upon further inspection found that the L/H lift arm attach bracket had cracked out around the welds. The detached bit had flopped around, laid on the pulley, and spun the top lip down to where it tossed the belt. Changed my weekend plans. This pic after some cleanup of course. 

[PbFlinger 64]

Time for a little work. This deck was really getting tired. All bent up from impacts, rusted here & there. Idler pulley & spindle bearings functional but rough. Sounded like a 3000 rpm cement mixer. 

[PbFlinger 64]

Started to attack in no particular order. One of the first things I did was some parts research. After seeing the price on idler pulleys, decided to rebuild them. Not paying $80 for a pulley because it needs a $3.00 bearing, even if it weren’t meant to be rebuilt. Here are some pics of my rebuild on the riveted idler pulley. 

[PbFlinger 64]

Halves separated, rivets drilled out. Pretty cool that it had O-ring around the outside of the bearing; not sure if that was for moisture protection, centering, noise? Anyway it’s in good enough shape after 35+ years I’ll probably put it back in. 

[PbFlinger 64]

Since it was a little rusty & somewhat expensive to replace, I decided to blast & paint it. Maybe some clown will thank me after I’m long gone. Doubt it. 

[PbFlinger 64]

A bit puzzling to me at first. The bearing for this pulley has a couple of bushings installed on both sides. I was able to get them worked out with a couple pairs of pliers. Installed in new 6203-RS bearing with light hammer taps on my anvil. 

[The Tuul Crib 7,336]

 

T😎

Edited May 22, 2021 by The Tuul Crib

[peter lena 8,584]

@PbFlinger, did you repack that bearing with hi temp grease ? pete

[Jeff-C175 7,199]

 

How are you going to reattach the halves?  Rivets? Or nut/bolt?

[PbFlinger 64]

Repack? More precisely pack. Like most offshore bearings it had a smidge of some kind of smerge that might qualify for lube at my antipode. I packed it with NLGI#WHIG (Wheel Horse Incredible Grease). This grease was developed as a joint effort between NASA and the South Bend Indiana sanitation department. I figured if it’s good enough for radio controlled cars on Mars, and salt covered trash trucks, probably good for a deck idler pulley. 

Edited May 23, 2021 by PbFlinger

[PbFlinger 64]

I decided to bolt it together with grade 8 bolts for a couple of carefully considered reasons-

1) Although I had a bag of 1/4” pop rivets, my rivet gun broke on about the 3rd rivet.

2) 18 grade 8 bolts are certainly necessary to withstand the incredible power of the Kohler engine 

3) The cad or whatever plating they put on grade 8’s lasts forever outside. I’ve got stuff that’s been sitting outside for 15 years, and the bolts look like new. 
4) That’s all the hardware store had in the right length. 

Well that little project is done anyway. Like most projects, figured I’d have the whole thing done by now; got one flipping pulley done. 

Edited May 23, 2021 by PbFlinger

[Jeff-C175 7,199]

34 minutes ago, PbFlinger said:

a couple

 

I'm gonna add one:

 

5) It looks cool as hell!

[PbFlinger 64]

Ha! Thanks! I agree. 

[PbFlinger 64]

Re; grease-   Actually used a high temp EP grease. I always at least check all of the bearings that I can these days, the manufacturers have seemed to be pretty spotty on lubing them for quite a few years now. 

[gwest_ca-(File Mod) 11,033]

There is a simple reason for not seeing much grease in a ball bearing.

If the balls are rolling on grease they generate minimal heat.

If the balls are rolling through grease the friction generated raises the temperature substantially.

 

Garry

[PbFlinger 64]

Hi Garry, yes this is true. And to be fair to the manufacturers this is a very common bearing with a very wide application window, and they have no idea what it’s eventual use will be. Heavily loaded at low speed in freezing temps, or near max design speed on a furnace fan- optimum lube for either would be quite different. One of the bearing sites recommended about a 40% pack of a NLGI #2 viscosity for this sort of use. I’ve found some completely dry in the past. This one had a smear of Vaseline looking lube about 1/2 way around one side of the ball guide; I couldn’t see any on the balls. I cleaned it & packed it. 

[PbFlinger 64]

One of the baffles got bored with things & left for greener pastures. 

[PbFlinger 64]

I found his cousin hiding in a sheet of 12 gauge & put him to work. Made the bullnose out of a piece of 1/2” pipe. Needs a little grinder work to finish up, but I’ve been going for 19hrs, & get to sleep for 3 or so. 

[PbFlinger 64]

Started on the bearing replacement in the other idler. I could see that it was spot welded together, but couldn’t see the welds very good because of the paint. Have to find them to drill them out. I was afraid that any sort of mechanical paint removal like sanding would smear everything up to where I couldn’t see them; a quick trip in the bead blaster showed them right up. 

[PbFlinger 64]

Found the centers best I could with a center punch. Pilot drilled 1/8”, 1/4” didn’t release them, had to go 5/16”. At this point I could flex the halves apart at the periphery, but they were stuck fast at the center around the bearing. Pried them apart with a pair of special pulley half separators, heated with a heat gun, applied one of my favorite penetrants (50-50 ATF/acetone) & worked around flexing everything a while with the precision tooling. No joy. 

[PbFlinger 64]

Stepped up to heat with MAP gas (Mainly All Propane). No joy. At this point tried to determine why it was stuck at the bearing. I couldn’t see any evidence of any more spot welds or friction welding. I drilled an exploratory well with a 3/32 but right next to the bearing. Looked like it was separating there, looking like the halves  were coined around the bearing really tight. A quality piece. 

[PbFlinger 64]

Now here’s why I love working on stuff like this. I tapped those screwdrivers in there as far as I dared, turned the torch up to max boogie. Next step oxyacetylene. Sometimes you just wreck stuff like this. However, after a couple of minutes of heating I heard a couple of krinks. Then with a pop, the top half jumped 6” in the air when it came loose. Ha!  Did I warp the whole mess beyond repair? Yeah probably. We’ll see. It was junk anyway.

[PbFlinger 64]

Well it looks like my welded idler pulley halves survived the separation OK. Slight hiccup here, I got a metric 15mm ID bearing  the first time. I had to get the proper 5/8 ID. The OD of the original bearing and mating surfaces of the halves were pretty corroded, so on assembly I put a bead of RTV around the OD of the  bearing. Luckily it was just enough & spooged out all the way to the outside of the pulley. Again elected to use grade 8 hardware and locking nuts due to excellent corrosion protection on these. The fit of the halves around the bearing was tight enough that I had to loosely insert the hardware for alignment, and tap the bearing halves down over the bearing with a couple of sockets. Could’ve done it in the press, but didn’t need that sort of force. Seems to run very true, I’m happy.

[PbFlinger 64]

One spindle rebuilt, one to go. After basic cleanup, a half hour ride in my sonic cleaner did a great job of cleaning up the housing. I started to bead blast it, but thought what’s the point. This is a functional, not a cosmetic rebuild. I may still decide to paint them for corrosion protection. I’ve elected to go full sealed on the bearings this time. I pulled the original pressed in grease fitting, and since it was drilled 1/4 inch already I just tapped it 5/16 and put a short bolt in there for dirt exclusion.