Bent mower deck

[WhyNot]

Yesterday morning I ran over a stump with my 54c mmm which is now causing one blade to not cut evenly. I thought it was the blade itself so I changed it with no luck. Then i figured that I had bent the hub or spindle so I swapped them from the other side of the deck and that made no difference. So today for about 6 hours I have been playing around with shims to try and get it to cut level but, it is just a guessing game that I'm not winning. The deck is not bent enough to see just by looking at it so I need some way to measure it so I know where to put the shims, any ideas ? I really don't want to spend the $950 that JD wants for new tin. Not a good start to vacation. Also don't yell but, it took me 2 years to hit the 50 hr mark on my 2210 so I just did the service. I added the recommended amount of hyd. fluid and when the tactor is not running the fluid 1/2 fills the sight glass but when it is running there is none to be seen, is this ok ? I know the book says that this is ok but, I question it because, before I changed the fluid the sight glass was always full running or not. I am guessing the dealer over filled it. Thanks

 

[jd110]

I would say your fluid level is now correct and it had been overfilled before. Are you sure the deck is bent on your mower or does the deck just need to be leveled with the adjustment turnbuckles? You could have bent the lift linkage when you hit the stump.

 

[JerryG]

You might try putting a 24 or 36" straight edge on the flat area where the blade bolts. By extending it that far out, it will magnify the distant to where you can tell how much to shim.

 

[murphyja]

Bent the middle blade mount of a 62c MMM mounted on a JD2210 by hitting one of several stumps which welcomed us to our newly purchased house in the summer of 2006.

Didn't want to shim the blade bearing with washers b/c I felt it would significantly weaken the bearing to deck connection.

Luckily a 2 1/2 inch pipe flange (I think it is 2 and 1/2 inch perhaps 2 inch) fits the bearing mount holes in the deck.

My dad and I placed a flange on each side of the bent bearing mount and bolted them together; sandwiching the deck. We screwed a 10 foot section of pipe into the flange on top of the deck to provide a powerful lever to bend the deck back.

We set the deck on scrap wood pieces and leveled it as best we could. We assumed the pipe flange threads were square to the flange mating surface. You could check by rolling the pipe on a bench with the flange attached to look for runout. We then held a level against the pipe to measure deviation from vertical. We stood on the deck to hold it in place while pushing the pipe to correct the deck distortion. We used a large square to double check the angle of the pipe relative to yardsticks supported level on top of the deck.

Worked like a charm. We have a about 1/16 inch residual difference in blade height relative to the bottom deck surface as the blade sweeps almost 180 degrees of its rotation. This doesn't show up in our lawn.

The pipe flanges and pipe cost about $30 as I recall at home depot. It took several hours.