Working on the 1455 Mower Deck

My small engine guy, Derek, and his welder friend, Donnie, came over Tuesday night (the 7th) to help begin re-assembling the renovated mower deck that is ultimately intended for the Bolens 1455 front-end loader garden tractor.  I say "ultimately" because we may try it out on the rail-mower once the Bolens 1250 engine and frame are mounted to the motorcar trailer.

Derek re-assembled the spindles and mounted the blades, after I cut down some bolts to use for the holes on either side of the blades.  Then he mounted the pulleys on the other side.  Looked mighty good by the time he was done.

Derek came back last night and mounted the gearbox and the new belt.  Then he worked on mounting the idler pulley array.  That was difficult because the array kept locking up instead of pivoting, as it needs to do according to the tension on the belt.  He had to knock the spacer out of one of the old pulleys and insert it into a new one, after knocking out two spacers from it.  We finally got the array. pivoting OK, which was a relief.  But we found two sleeve bearings missing from the supports for the deck arms on this deck, and at least eight missing or wallowed out on the 1250 deck.  The dimensions were really odd (9/16 ID x 13/16 OD) so I had to spend some time on the phone tracking down a supplier.  Will order about 12 tomorrow so we have enough on hand.  Then we can continue to move ahead.

Here's a photo of the 1455 deck after mounting pulley and gearbox:

Now, for contrast, here's a photo of the 1250 mower deck.  I hadn't touched it so it could serve as a template for reassembling the 1455 deck.  And, in fact, it was useful to take apart the 1250's idler pulley array to see how it was put together as we were puzzling over how to get the 1455's array to pivot properly.

Obviously, there's some serious corrosion to be dealt with, plus the idler pulleys are shot. Hopefully the other pulleys can be salvaged, along with the spindles and bearing housings.  Will need to order new bearings for sure.  Some parts of the deck will have to be strengthened with metal plate welded to it.  So I'm going to have to spend some money on the deck but then we will have one for the rail-mower and one for the 1455 and I won't have to transfer my 1455 deck to and from the rail-mower.

On the rail-mower itself, I showed the drive sheave with the crack in it to Derek and Donnie and their opinion is to leave it alone.  They say the sheave is cast iron and it takes special techniques to weld and even then isn't always successful.  But they did emphasize that the sheave ought to fit onto the shaft easily and if it doesn't, then the shaft and the inside of the sheave need to be smoothed down with emery cloth or sandpaper.  That's exactly what Frank Glatzl told me, of course, but I disremembered to carry those instructions out.  So that's on my list of things to do so I can move forward with the rail-mower project.  At least I'm getting answers to my questions.