Alright, after fixing a problem I had with my John Deere 160 Riding Mower, where both the clutch and brake pedals stayed depressed when I threw it into reverse, I encountered a new problem.
I had removed the transmission + the back wheels, and realized the transmission was not the issue. So I re-attached the transmission and forgot to plug in the purple 2-prong connector, so my mower wouldn't start.
To get at the plug easier, I had to remove the mower deck. I just reconnected the 2-pronged plug, and now I've forgotten how to re-attach the mower deck.
Currently, the mower deck is hanging by the 2 main support bars that are attached to the mower body. I did not remove the 2 hair-pins that hold the deck to the body. I removed all the other hairpins though, so the deck was hanging low enough for me to get at the plug.
Can anyone here give me a step-by-step for properly re-attaching the mower deck? My local library did not have a copy of the user manual for this particular mower, and to buy the manual right from my local JD supplier would be too pricy.
1) Ensure that the mower deck drive belt tensioner lever is released. The lever is on the discharge chute side of the mower deck.
2) Attach the rear draft arms to the tractor (this step may be done based on your post)
3) Attach the front draft arms to the rod that goes through the holes in the front attachment mount points. Cotter pins mount through the rod inside the draft arms.
4) Attach the lift straps to the deck (assuming they're still attached to the tractor). The adjustable one goes on the left side if you need to reinstall them first.
4) (a) If you need to reinstall the lift straps hold the deck height adjust arm all the way forward/down. Install the lift straps through the hole on the lift strap and pull them down so they are engaged in the slot. Having a partner to hold the height adjust lever is a big help, otherwise tie it or use a bungee.
5) Reinstall the mower deck drive belt to the PTO. It takes some OOMPH to displace the deck drive pulley to generate enough slack to get the belt around the PTO.
6) Reengage the mower deck belt tensioner lever by pivoting it ~180 degrees to retension the sping that attaches to the two-stack pulley of the mower deck drive.
7) :MTF_wel: and :wwp:
EDIT: I've got questions as I'm repairing this with my father (I'm posting this on behalf of him). He read over your steps and had some questions:
1. "3) Attach the front draft arms to the rod that goes through the holes in the front attachment mount points." <--Which holes? There's 2 set of holes. Upper or lower?
2. Where does the spring and bracket from the chute-side of the deck go? We kinda took the deck off without taking pictures of how everything goes on.
Also, my father is wondering if anyone here has pictures of a John Deere 160 Riding Mower, of the deck area showing how everything is attached.
And the beams I was talking about are connected to the mower body, and they go perfectly vertically down from the body to the deck, and halfway down is where the cotter pins are. Those are the only things we didn't remove, so the deck kind of hangs down at the front, but the majority of the rear end is still supported.
We're taking pictures of what our current mower-deck situation is right now. Hopefully you can revise your guide (if needed) based on what we've got going on.
1) use the lower holes
2) The spring and bracket are the lift assist spring/bracket. I've got pix of it here somewhere... LTG you out there?? You found them last time :banghead3
Your "beams" = my "lift straps" - they connect the mower deck to the height adjust lever.
175 has a single disc setup on the left side of the transaxle. The brake pedal rotates a bracket attached to the caliper. The bracket (kind of like a W but not quite - hard to describe) depresses two cylinders/pins that slide in the caliper and apply pressure to one of the two brake pads. The other pad is fixed. Step 1 to 100 series brake issues is to check the adjustment of the brake setup. Often it is over tightened which results in no brakes as quickly as under tightened. Its either a 7/16 or 1/2 nut. Best done when the mower deck is off. If that doesn't fix it the slide pins may be stuck. You can remove the caliper to get access to the pins and lube them but its a royal PITA on the 175. I couldn't find the magic tool to get the back caliper mounting bolt so I drilled a hole in the frame and stuck a 1/4" socket extension through it. Lubed the pins and played with the the tensioning nut and found brakes. Added another nut on the tensioner shaft to keep the primary nut from backing off. Sorry but no pix of this mess.
Alright, so we forgot to take pics of our current mower deck situation, but I'll make sure we get the pictures tonight, and then I'll upload 'em to Imageshack and post 'em here.
What exactly does the lift assist spring do? Mine has been hanging since I have had my 160. Also if anyone has any info on how to get the deck lift handle button to spring back it stays in all the time and i have to pull it up manually when i lift the deck. Thanks in advance.
The lift assist spring provides a little extra pull when you raise the mower deck. It sounds like the spring for the thunb button on your lift handle is broken. Different parts.
Alright, here are the pictures of our current mower deck situation:
The spring and bracket, not really attached, but where the bracket is in this picture is where I thought it went. As well, you can see the arm in the front there. We couldn't figure out which pin the arm went on, whether it was the one with the bracket/spring hanging on it, or the one behind it.
Here's another shot of the deck. That vertical bar/strap with the hole is one of the 2 straps we left attached. I believe the other one is right across from it, out of sight. And the cotter pin you can clearly see right up front is another thing we left on, that I forgot to mention in the first post
Here's the holes we were referring to when we mentioned 2 sets of holes. So we use the lower holes, yes?
Here's a full shot of our 160. The front bumper was added on by my father. We plan to repaint this mower. Essentially our plan is to repaint all the green areas with a new coat of John Deere green, paint the bumper yellow, and repaint the mower deck yellow, to make it look new.
So hopefully now that you've seen what our current situation is, can you possibly revise the above guide you posted (if needed)? We need to get the deck re-attached as it's been sitting in our garage taking up space for a few days now
Alright, here are the pictures of our current mower deck situation:
The spring and bracket, not really attached, but where the bracket is in this picture is where I thought it went. As well, you can see the arm in the front there. We couldn't figure out which pin the arm went on, whether it was the one with the bracket/spring hanging on it, or the one behind it.
That's your lift assist spring and bracket there, the front end of the spring attaches the way you have it, the back end goes where I've put the oval on a copy of your picture, below
I believe the other one is right across from it, out of sight. And the cotter pin you can clearly see right up front is another thing we left on, that I forgot to mention in the first post
Yup, you use the lower holes... There should be a "draft bar" that goes across between those two lower holes... You lift the front draft arms on the deck into place, slide the draft bar in, then put cotter pins through the holes on the draft bar INBOARD of the draft arms,,
Here's a full shot of our 160. The front bumper was added on by my father. We plan to repaint this mower. Essentially our plan is to repaint all the green areas with a new coat of John Deere green, paint the bumper yellow, and repaint the mower deck yellow, to make it look new.
So hopefully now that you've seen what our current situation is, can you possibly revise the above guide you posted (if needed)? We need to get the deck re-attached as it's been sitting in our garage taking up space for a few days now
Here's some pics of my tractor's front draft arm connections and lift assist bracket:
Notice how the Lift Assist bracket is horizontal... This puts more tension on the lift assist spring, to give your lift arm more assistance... Its kinda a pain to get on there tho, and it makes it a bit more of a challenge to hook up the lift straps. I found that blocking the mower up on a couple of 2x4 chunks once I had slid it underneath the tractor made hooking the lift straps up a lot easier...
However, I still have one question that I feel has been unanswered so far (I read back through all the posts and didn't see anything that answered this question, but I may have missed if someone did answer it)
In this picture below, you can see the J-shaped bar that I've circled the hole on, as well as the 2 pegs.
Does the bar attach to the front peg, where the bracket and spring are attached to, or the rear peg?
We tried pushing the deck back as far as we could in an attempt to connect the bar to the rear peg, but it was a no-go. So I'm thinking it's the front peg, but I'm not 100% sure.
Other than this question, we think we can re-attach the deck now, using the information you all posted. So the next time my father has a day off from work, we're gonna re-attach this deck, and I'll let you all know how it went.
The rear draft arms go on the rear posts. If you look at my pic of my lift assist bracket closely, you can see my reAr draft arm on the reAr post (my mower is in the raised position). If you can't get it onto the rear post, then there's something wrong with how the mower is positioned.
Well, my father did have to put a flathead screwdriver in between the bar and the peg and smack it with a hammer to get the bar off in the first place.
I guess it's gonna take abit of strength and manouevring (I think I spelled manouevering wrong lol) to get the bar back into the rear peg.
JohnDeere160Owner Thanks for the great pics they will help me as well. a lot !!
They recently posted the break down of the lift handle and the part #'s, there is a spring in there.
Since my pulleys and spindles are silver and black does that mean they are replacements, were the factory yellow as in the picks ??
They recently posted the break down of the lift handle and the part #'s, there is a spring in there.
Since my pulleys and spindles are silver and black does that mean they are replacements, were the factory yellow as in the picks ??
Hmm...not sure. We didn't buy our 160 from a John Deere dealership, nor one of our local lawnmower/snowblower/etc stores. We were looking for a new riding mower on Kijiji and found someone in the general region of Ontario that we live in who happened to be selling their John Deere 160, so we bought it off of them.
However, since they are silver and black, they might be replacements....but hey, I'm not what you would call an "expert" on John Deere mowers. I don't know the different types of JD mowers, or what differs between different models such as the 160 and the 185, etc. I bet someone else here would know though.
If you are trying to attach the rear draft arms with the mower deck drive belt on both pulleys it will require some extra muscle because you are also fightiing the belt tension springs. The deck may also be slightly cocked at the wrong angle under the tractor. Also it looks from your picture that you have the lift assist spring going to the deck somewhere. That is not correct. Go back and look closely at the picture I posted from the left side of the tractor and you can see the notch in the lift handle mechanism where the other end attaches.
Yeah we kinda took that spring/bracket (lift assist spring?) off, and unhooked everything except for the 2 vertical supports attached to the body (as seen in the one picture), and that visible cotter pin on that bar that you can see in the other picture I posted.
I do believe we have all of the drive belts attached, so you may be right.
Oh, I forgot to reply about the picture from above.
Because of the various things we removed in our attempt to completely remove the deck, the deck just kinda hangs from the body, so when my father rolled the mower out onto our driveway to get pictures, the deck was freewheeling around. That's why it looks crooked. Upon pushing it back into the garage, the deck ended up turning towards the left side of the deck, so it sits under the mower like this: \
But I can push it so it's straight, or at an angle, like \ or /
It's just a matter of re-attaching everything and it won't go back at an angle anymore.
Ok, we've encountered the same problem we had that caused us to remove the deck and transmission in the first place. We've got the deck re-attached properly (as far as we can tell). But for some reason, when we start the mower up, and throw it into gear, it doesn't move.
This is why we dropped the deck off in the first place. Before this broke, I went to mow the lawn (this was a few days ago). I stepped on the brake and clutch pedal and threw the mower into reverse. Then something broke. The mower would not go. We even tried throwing it back into neutral to push it into our shed and it would not move.
Eventually we removed the transmission from the mower in the yard, lifted the mower up by the trailer hitch and literally pushed it from our back yard into our garage.
Now, this is what my father is saying is wrong;
"The little pulley above the electric clutch has slipped or jumped the keyway. The belt that goes from the front to the back of the mower is not spinning. We're gonna have to drop the clutch. I guarantee the pulleys spun right off the shaft because that belt ain't moving."
Right now, I'm not exactly sure what needs to be done, so does anyone know what may have happened, or how to fix this?
EDIT: Seems we're gonna try dropping the clutch. Any advice on how to drop the clutch out of this mower?
EDIT 2: Apparently the belt is spinning fine. Now my fathers saying it's something to do with the idler belt. And apparently the drive belt is loose. And now he's saying "It'd be easier to see what's wrong with the deck out". I looked at him and said "We're not taking the deck off again."
Pulling the PTO clutch is easiest done with an impact wrench. Usually pops it right off. The JD tech manual recommends removing the top engine cover to gain access to the flywheel mounting bolt so you can put a wrench/socket on it to keep the crankshaft from spinning. Otherwise the crankshaft just spins when you use a regular ratchet.
The rear ends are known to be weak on the gear drive 100 series (160, 170, 180). If the input shaft is turning and the axles aren't (when its in gear) your problem could be internal.
"The whole drive belt from the front to the back isn't spinning. And the pulley above the clutch...nothing wrong with it. The belts way too loose."
Direct quote from my father.
He just started it up and said "Yup, the belts too loose, so it won't spin. That's the whole problem"
"Wait a minute, this thing spins to tighten the belt....why isn't it tightening the belt. There's 2 idler pulleys on a rocking mechanism, they won't tighten the belt. Somethings wrong here with the drive. It's to do with the belts, they won't tighten."
The idler pulleys likely have a spring that keeps tension on the ground drive belt. You need to find that and see if its working. Puling the fender deck might not be a bad idea but keep better track of what you remove then when you did the mower deck. Remove the knobs and bezels from the deck height adjust and parking brake. Remove the knob from the shift lever - you do not need to remove the shift bezel. Disconnect the seat switch electrical connector. Remove the lower steering column plastic pedestal cover (2 x 10mm bolts). Remove 5 bolts that hold the fender deck. It takes a little finesse after that because you have to get around the levers and knobs but it will reveal your problem with the idler.
Alrighty, I'll show him your post, Herd, and we'll get working on what you suggested.
EDIT: Seems my father doesn't want to go through all the hassle of removing all those parts, so he's gonna jack the mower up and look for this spring, to see if it's even there.
EDIT 2: We found the spring, but it seems that the way the spring pulls, it loosens the belt. Something doesn't seem right...it seems like the belt has gone on the wrong side of the pulley...
We had a good laugh at the whole "Keep better track of what you remove" part of your post
Just incase I forget to do this once we've fixed the mower, I've put a brief thank-you note in my signature. It's hard to find good help on the internet these days, and you guys have gone above and beyond in your efforts of helping us.
You may be able to see the idler frm underneath. When I replaced the ground drive belt on my 175 I did not have to remove the fender deck but then I did not have a problem with the tensioner either. Always glad to help a 100 series owner (or anybody else - but 100 series is what I know best. So far...
The dilers should be along the right frame rail toward the middle or rear.
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