Small Farm Life

In the interest of fairness, my post about a typical day needs to be balanced by a view of the “other” kind of day.  The kind of day that goes on more often than anyone admits or likes.  It started simply enough, with a head start on the day to do some mowing.  Well, not quite, back up a day.  The day before, a belt broke on the green lawn tractor.  Its the belt that drives the mower blades, so this day, the first stop was at the local implement dealer to get a new belt.

Okay, well, not just a belt.

One of the pulleys is attached to an idler arm and it appeared to be bent, and when I tried to straighten it, it snapped into two pieces, so the trip to the implement dealer was or a belt AND this broken piece.  At the dealer, they pop open a computer screen and after drilling down through various models of tractors, mower decks, and schematics, the counter man and I found the diagram with the needed parts.  This wasn’t my first parts rode0…I’ve done this before, and I was smart and brought part of the broken piece so we could identify it on the computer.  Or so I thought I was smart.

Simple enough and less than $20 later, I was returning on the 20 minute drive to Two Mile Ranch.

Back on the ground, as I disassembled the pully arm, all was going quite well until I discovered there are two plastic bushing in the hole that guide tis arm over the shaft (remember this shaft, we’ll come back to it later.)  One of the bushings came out easily and could be resued, the second bushing was damanges as I took it out and totally un-usable.

Back in the car, back the 20 minute trip, back to the implement dealer.  $less than $5 of plastic parts later, I was back inthe car, back o0nn the 20 minute trip, and back at Two Mile Ranch.  Put together, I re mounted the mower deck to the bottom of the tractor and when I atached the drive belt, the shaft (remember the shaft?) tiped forward and angled the pulley into the metal of the mower deck.

Ugh.  I took everything back apart, looked at this shaft.  It’s welded with a plate to the top of the deck.  But it is much more bendable than it should be.  It can easily be repositioned with hand force. So, I loaded the deck into the car, drive the 20 minutes back to the implement dealer, figuring they see these all the time and if this is common, they may also have a fix.  What resulted was some head scratching, a spacer, and a “good luck”.  And a bill for less than $20.

Back at Two Mile, Norman came by looking for more mushrooms and as I was leaving, offered to take the deck and weld it.

He dropped it off later that night, and let me tell you, he did it right.  The deck is back on the mower, and it works well again.

But is was one of those “other” days.

Related posts:

1. If it aint broke, don’t fix it, and if it is, you can fix it
2. A typical day – just another day in paradise