50" Deck Spindle Pulley Wear

784 Views 5 Replies 3 Participants Last post by ATLANTIC CENTRAL, Jun 2, 2019

Gloftness

Discussion Starter · May 31, 2019

One of my deck spindle pulley's had been run with a loose bearing and it wallowed out the grease seal surface. Rather than scrap it and find another expensive splined pulley, I decided to try to make my own version of the "speedi sleeve".

The first photo shows the bad pulley next to a good one. I used the axle shaft as a mandrel in my lathe and turned down the cast iron until it cleaned up the worn seal bearing surface on the pulley.

Then I made a thin wall steel sleeve that was a couple thousands smaller than the bearing surface. I heated the sleeve and shrunk it on the pulley surface that had been machined clean.

Finally, I put my chuck on the spindle shaft, with a live center in the other end of the axle and turned down the sleeve to the correct original size to just fit into the spindle seal. Chucking on the bearing surface (lightly) and using the live center, the seal surface was machined as close to center as I could reasonably get it. My splines were pretty snug on the pulley, so if you have a worn spline, this may not work.

The result is shown in the last photo. It all went together very well. I used the original steel grease seals as that was what was in all of my spindles.

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ATLANTIC CENTRAL

· #2 · Jun 1, 2019

Nice work.

Your recent posts have been very interesting. I do hope you realize that few of us have a machine shop in our garages thereby making it more cost effective for most to simply buy new parts?

Maybe I am just a little more fussy about maintenance, but I have never experienced the kinds of wear you have pictured in your recent posts?

You can read about my tractor and its 23 year journey of improvements here:

https://www.mytractorforum.com/24-gravely/204196-latest-16g-improvements.html

Sheldon

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Gloftness

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jun 1, 2019

Sheldon,
I appreciate your comments. I bought a little South Bend 9" lathe a couple years ago and have had fun making small parts and seeing what I can do with it. I'm a rookie at it but it has been fun.

I've been using a commercial 10 or 12 for 30 years for snow blowing, tilling, rotary plowing and mowing. I've accumulated a lot of attachments and now that I'm retired, I can fix some of them up. Most wear on these attachments is due to pure neglect by previous owners. Grease and oil are cheap, and low budget air cleaners and worn out or aftermarket carburetors will trash an engine in short order. Between my brother and I, we have about ten of the 10/12HP kohler powered machines and one 812. The ones we use are mostly fresh Kohler rebuilds and they are reliable work horses.

I shared the pics and info in case someone else might want to do similar work on their equipment. Eventually "new" parts for these machines will dry up and all we are left with is the used and abused stuff.

Greg

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ATLANTIC CENTRAL

· #4 · Jun 1, 2019

Gloftness said:
Sheldon,
I appreciate your comments. I bought a little South Bend 9" lathe a couple years ago and have had fun making small parts and seeing what I can do with it. I'm a rookie at it but it has been fun.

I've been using a commercial 10 or 12 for 30 years for snow blowing, tilling, rotary plowing and mowing. I've accumulated a lot of attachments and now that I'm retired, I can fix some of them up. Most wear on these attachments is due to pure neglect by previous owners. Grease and oil are cheap, and low budget air cleaners and worn out or aftermarket carburetors will trash an engine in short order. Between my brother and I, we have about ten of the 10/12HP kohler powered machines and one 812. The ones we use are mostly fresh Kohler rebuilds and they are reliable work horses.

I shared the pics and info in case someone else might want to do similar work on their equipment. Eventually "new" parts for these machines will dry up and all we are left with is the used and abused stuff.

Greg

I understand, and fully appreciate the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

I'm sure one day parts will get hard to find, but right now it is amazing how well GRAVELY still supports these machines that are 20 to 50 years old.

They can do that for three primary reasons - they used a large number of common parts between products, they seldom redesigned without interchangeability, and many parts are common generic industrial or automotive pieces.

I am often amazed that guys come on these forums looking for parts, assuming GRAVELY does not have the part, when in fact they do.

Best of luck with your machines,

Sheldon

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HeyYou

· #5 · Jun 2, 2019

ATLANTIC CENTRAL said:
I understand, and fully appreciate the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

I'm sure one day parts will get hard to find, but right now it is amazing how well GRAVELY still supports these machines that are 20 to 50 years old.

They can do that for three primary reasons - they used a large number of common parts between products, they seldom redesigned without interchangeability, and many parts are common generic industrial or automotive pieces.

I am often amazed that guys come on these forums looking for parts, assuming GRAVELY does not have the part, when in fact they do.

Best of luck with your machines,

Sheldon

I guess I am just the odd man out.

I have SERIOUS trouble finding some parts for my collection of GMT 9000's...... A fair few of the parts for the mower deck were used on other tractors as well, which is darn convenient. But, engine parts, (continental engine, actually made by Renault....) are difficult to find, at best, and hideously expensive if you can find them. Would be a LOT easier if any of the cars Renault used the engine in, actually made it to the US.... but, not so lucky. Sourcing parts from overseas is really hit and miss. You might be able to find listings for them, but, are the actually in stock? So far, the answer has been "No"..... and I am reluctant to spend a hundred bucks or more on a part that 'looks right' in the pics, only to have something completely different show up on my doorstep. Overseas shipping is killer.

Ah well. So far, my 'parts bin' in the barn has yeilded everything I have needed.

Need to have another mow-in that is within 'day trip' distance for me.

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ATLANTIC CENTRAL

· #6 · Jun 2, 2019

Well agreed, the GMT 9000 is a different story when it comes to parts.

But normal wear parts for riders and walk behinds are still pretty well supported. I always check the dealer first, then check the older dealers for NOS stuff, before I go looking for used or aftermarket generics.

Sometimes prices are a bit high from GRAVELY, sometimes not, it is really hard to figure.

As for the Continental engine, it only makes sense they would be hard to find by now. for as few GMT tractors as they made, surely GRAVELY was not going to stock pile those parts, and the other applications for those engines are all largely in the scrap yards years ago.

Sheldon

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50" Deck Spindle Pulley Wear

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