On saturday, I spent about 6 and a half hours mowing. Yes, I have way too much land. The original intent was to mow around a couple large brush piles so we could burn them down to clear the area for mowing/grass again. The wind picked up, and we decided to just keep mowing. It was a beautiful day, but way too windy to burn.
It seems that when I put a new drive belt and blades on my Land Pride finish mower, i didn't do an adequate job of tightening the deck drive belt. It took me a while to understand what was going on, as the tractor is loud, and I wear ear covering headphones to keep the drone of the engine from deafening me.
What I recalled is that when I used to run into tall patches of grass, the engine would start to bog upwards of 800-1000rpms. That's pretty substantial on a tractor that runs in the 2300-2400 rpm range. Saturday I would get very minimal drops, say 2-300rpms. What I DID start to notice was the sound from the deck was dropping. At one point, actually smoking the belt. That's not good.
The difficulty in tightening the belt comes from the need to lift the deck (higher than just with the 3pt hitch) to be able to comfortably loosen the bolts, then pull towards the back the entire main gearbox assembly deck. That would be easy, but the piece itself probably weighs 80-90lbs itself, and the tension of the belts adds a bit more to the situation. It can be done, it just seems I didn't do it well enough, and it would take 2 people to make it happen, as someone will need to be pulling the assembly back on the top as the other tightens the bolts.
I'll work on posting some pics as I do this in the next week or so.
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