I have an MTD 190-032 that's now on its third winter on a little cub cadet LT1045. Always has something that needs maintaining, but yesterday I had a whole new problem.
We had only about 5" of snow fall yesterday, but that was quickly followed by quite a bit of freezing rain which saturated the snow and made it very heavy. Unfortunately, I couldn't get home early enough and had to move this heavy, thick snow from my 300' or so of driveway. If I drove too slow, the snow just clogged up the chute, but if I drove a little quicker, so it was getting more snow to the impeller, the impeller quite happily shot this thick stream of snow about 8 feet up and 10 feet to the side. So, I did the half of the driveway that's the hill (I always do this part first, so if the machine breaks down at least we can climb the hard part of the driveway) and then started working on the level portion that heads out to the street. On the return pass from the street, I'm 90% done with the driveway, and I get smoke and hot belt smell coming from the drive pulley that attaches to the right angle drive mechanism.
I gave it a few minutes to cool and drove the unit up in front of my garage, and re-engage the blower for a moment. The impeller and augers spin up and clear themselves of snow, but the smell and smoke quickly come back and I can't tell if they might be spinning a bit slower than normal. I killed everything, and checked the belt tension, which seems just fine.
Now, I was really working the machine hard with this snow, so I'm wondering if the right angle drive has begun to seize, or if the reducer transmission that turns the augers has begun to seize. There are no instructions in the manual about greasing these, so I don't know what grease I should be using or how to go about greasing them.
Any suggestions on what to grease or lubricate these two things with, and which one I should start with?
We had only about 5" of snow fall yesterday, but that was quickly followed by quite a bit of freezing rain which saturated the snow and made it very heavy. Unfortunately, I couldn't get home early enough and had to move this heavy, thick snow from my 300' or so of driveway. If I drove too slow, the snow just clogged up the chute, but if I drove a little quicker, so it was getting more snow to the impeller, the impeller quite happily shot this thick stream of snow about 8 feet up and 10 feet to the side. So, I did the half of the driveway that's the hill (I always do this part first, so if the machine breaks down at least we can climb the hard part of the driveway) and then started working on the level portion that heads out to the street. On the return pass from the street, I'm 90% done with the driveway, and I get smoke and hot belt smell coming from the drive pulley that attaches to the right angle drive mechanism.
I gave it a few minutes to cool and drove the unit up in front of my garage, and re-engage the blower for a moment. The impeller and augers spin up and clear themselves of snow, but the smell and smoke quickly come back and I can't tell if they might be spinning a bit slower than normal. I killed everything, and checked the belt tension, which seems just fine.
Now, I was really working the machine hard with this snow, so I'm wondering if the right angle drive has begun to seize, or if the reducer transmission that turns the augers has begun to seize. There are no instructions in the manual about greasing these, so I don't know what grease I should be using or how to go about greasing them.
Any suggestions on what to grease or lubricate these two things with, and which one I should start with?
