Ok so I put the spring on with the loop on the peg as its supposed to be. Here is what it looks like in place...
I could not find any pulleys that were either bent or crushed. They all apear in line and spin smoothly when moving the belt by hand.
I re-installed the deck and went out onto the drive way to engage the blades (at a lower RMP
) and took a short video of it running. Do you guys consider this smooth or bouncing? And I tried to get the video as smooth as possible, but I was sitting on the mower and holding my phone out to the side.
https://youtu.be/GklgFNhVi4Y
And here is a picture of the spring and pulley arm after mowing a couple of hours.
It looks as though the spring tip is about to come out of the hole on the pulley arm. I have a feeling the pulley arm should be down closer to the 90 degree section of the spring. And being up so high on the spring is causing the added tenstion on the 90 degree area and that is where it always breaks. ANY ideas now? THANKS everyone!