The triangular support looks like a manufactured part because Frank was able to use a "wire EDM" tool to create and cut the metal, as well as the holes. Pretty sharp work. Frank also fabricated a new blade driveshaft, since the middle one had been bent when the rail-mower hit an obstruction on a switch several work session ago. That was another strain on the belt that is now fixed. My contribution in all this was to clean up the underside and the top side of the deck, since I don't like dirt and grease on equipment.
Frank installed the triangular base and bolt and then installed the belt and tensioner assembly. However, he was not impressed with the way the belt was continuing to get pushed out toward the edge of the pulley. He tried several different approaches to dealing with the problem. Finally, he removed the assembly and brought over the assembly from an identical deck I bought for the Bolens 1455 garden tractor with front-end loader. He installed that and the belt did not have the same problem with getting pushed toward the edge. Then he took a close look at the belt covers for the first time since we planned to put them on to keep debris off. He realized there is a hole for the tension assembly bolt to go through the cover so the cover can be bolted to the assembly. That would help hold the assembly in the correct relative position. However, the triangular support provides a much more secure foundation so we will stay with that.
We did decide to cut off the curved edges of the belt covers since they made it impossible to take the covers off without completely removing the deck from the rail-mower, which we would not want to have to do out in the field. Got out my Kawasaki angle grinder and began cutting the edges off but as we were getting close to finishing the first one, smoke began coming out of the grinder and it slowly came to a halt. We had "smoked" the grinder. We finished the cutting job with a hacksaw. So now I am in the market for a new angle grinder. Plus Frank noted my trusty old electric drill has just about had it, which I knew in my heart but had not wanted to acknowledge. Guess am in the market for one of those as well.
Here's some more photos of our efforts:
These show the tensioner assembly before Frank replaced it with the one off the other mower deck. He identified the problem with this assembly as the orange metal bar on the bottom being too "weak." So Frank is going to replace it with a wider bar of new metal. He will also modify the assembly so the spring hooks onto that bottom bar instead of the top bar, since he thinks the tension at the higher level is causing part of the problem with the belts riding high using this assembly. There isn't much of a problem at all with the other assembly so the deck should perform fine during the forthcoming June 30 RPI work session from Llano-Kingsland, at least we sure do hope so.
Frank will work on a few other tweaks as well. He plans to grind off part of the old metal seat so we can mount it on the back of the rail-mower in case someone needs to sit there to adjust the mower operation. He may also fab another blade driveshaft. Plus he will be finishing up some mower lift arm supports to use with the rail-mower so we can return the ones we borrowed from the 1455 mower deck. He also plans to re-mount the knob on the throttle cable so it can be tightened when necessary.
Here's two last shots to close out this post, showing Frank with rail-mower and deck, and the deck ready to be re-mounted onto the rail-mower:
