Few questions, forgive if they are common as a brief search didnt come up with anything specific enough for me.
1. XT1 46" rider...100hrs
2. Last mow I heard a pretty significant "bearing going out" sound when the belt was engaged, figured its either an idler or the belt needs replacing and since I've got no history on the first 50 hours of this mower before I purchased it. It wouldnt kill me to take the deck off and take a look. I am not a mower expert, but I rebuild old trucks and it certainly gave the impression of a "metal on metal" sort of sound that only manifested with the blades engaged.
3. The deck removal was cake, but I found that despite me deliberately hosing out the outer pulley covers, the insides of that area were complete covered in what could be best described as highly packed in compost. Clearly my efforts at hosing off/out the deck made little to no effort on the deep insides of the covers. Can these just be left off? I realize they are likely a safety item, but if its going to prematurely wear down belts and those expensive blade shafts, ill happily keep them off or cut them down to nothing where its more of a skeleton than a solid frame etc.
4. I was expecting the source of the noise to be completely obvious upon removing the belt, but that's where it gets confusing. One idler spun like butter, literally no sound or friction and had zero lateral movement that would indicate bearing damage...as expected. The other one has a SLIGHT movement, yet makes no noise when spun by hand...but doesn't turn nearly as well as the other. I'll replace this one just for the fact its 20 bucks ad the deck is already off. I just don't think that was the source of the awful noise?
5. Both the blade shaft pulleys spin freely and do not appear bound up or otherwise in bad shape, no vibration or play at all in the pulley or the blade itself, however both make fairly significant noise when turning. Is this normal and simply a matter of the blade riding up against the bottom of the deck and such? While I didn't expect them to be silent, they definitely have a gritty sound to them but both are identical so I'd lean towards that being normal especially since they rotate very smoothly by hand.
6. Speaking of clumped up grass, when removing the deck i noticed the entire upper portion of the frame cross-member right above the deck was just slap full of packed in grass. it was even extremely difficult to remove by hand and i have to assume its all jammed up against the two tensioner/idler pulleys for the main drive belt. After 20min or so with a screwdriver and an air chuck most of it was removed, but had I not been under there fiddling with the deck id never have noticed it nor made any effort to clean it. is that normal? is this an area that's supposed to get regular maintenance? I saw no obvious access or ability to remove that area for easy cleaning, and it was certainly not "large hand/arm friendly".
Lastly the belt didn't appear damaged or nicked or cut, but I have to assume its original to the mower as i doubt the previous owner swapped it out before it hit 50 hours, and it was beginning to squeal pretty good when engaging the PTO lever to activate the blades. who knows, entire sound could have just been my belt all along?
Thanks in advance!
