Lawn chief gets Jacobsen deck

[professor]

Picked up this unit without deck last month and adapted the deck to it. It is an alumium deck that was given to me (which I had to repair) It cuts very nice, 11hp briggs, 42inch deck:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y216/professor8/mikes160.jpg
I had to make the front part of the deck hang from the machine rather than ride on the wheels I put on because they would ride into the grass and dog in on a turn, so I put some chain to restrain deck drop and set those wheels 1 half inch up- works great now.http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y216/professor8/mikes158.jpg

The front mount is pretty much conventional but the rear has a vertical fin that is on the deck and it is captured by a slot arrangement on the machine. So the deck can go up and down (and twist a bit) but is restrained from going sideways. I made a lift deal that raises the back of the deck- that's the best I can do. The slot bar has a hole in the side of it that just happened to be there- it doesn't do anything.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y216/professor8/mikes159.jpg
Because the unit is light, it is low on effort to whip around on, the vari-drive does work- it has a loaded double pulley set-up that, as you engage the drive,goes from low to higher speed after the clutch engages. So if you push the clutch in a bit after it is engaged- the machine slows down and goes steady in that lower speed. Have yet to recover the seat and see if the carb float has gas in it. Probably will make a muffler to put on the end of the stock one. Quiet is nice.

Mike

[Bruceman]

Rock on, Professor! Way to use what's laying around. I like how you beefed up the joints with those bolts. Do you have any problems with the deck belt coming off? That Vari-drive's cinda cool, isn't it?

Good work, Bruce~

[professor]

You know Bruce, when I first did this deck on the other machine I didn't have a little "L" bracket on the idler pulley to retain it and it did come off until I made one. On this machine, my first cutting ended abruptly with a snapped belt- the belt got caught under "L" bracket so I made a new bracket out of 1/4" that fits very close to the pulley- leaving NO room for it to jump out and everything is good now.

The Vari-drive IS cool, giving some of the benefit of auto trans. I did take that apart to grease the needle brgs in it (it was fine) and to see how it worked. Lots of xtra stuff and looks like no fun to change a belt. But from what I see, drive belts practically last forever anyway.

Oh, the float did have a leak, and I just remembered I wanted to post a picture of the gas gauge/cap that I fixed. It had a missing clear part which let in LOTS of water into the gas tank and carb (which had to be discovered and fixed by the seller so it would run before I bought the tractor).
I thought and thought about where to get some clear material to replace the lens, looking all thru our stuff and then I spotted the perfect shape- the center bottom of a big pretzel plastic jar. Cut it out and glued it in with Seal All, then drilled a tiny vent hole in the black part under the lens. Sure, i could have gone out and bought one somewhere but what challenge is that?
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y216/professor8/mikes161.jpg

Mike

[mark777]

That is some impressive engineering. I'm currently (casually) looking to replace a Snapper deck that has considerable rust-through and your post has inspired me to think outside the box :)

Mark