Unnecessary Time Wasters

Qball

Qball

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I have no tolerance or patience for stupid unnecessary stuff that happens during a repair project.

Last week, one of the three deck spindles on my Cub Cadet bit the dust. So I got on Amazon and ordered a kit that came with three new spindles, new blade retaining nuts, new spindle mounting bolts, and a new belt.

Simple enough job. Yesterday evening, I remove the deck from the mower, remove the spindle shields, blades, and spindles. Install all of the new stuff, grab my mini-grease gun, and start pumping each spindle with lube. Each spindle takes exactly a full 3 ounce tube of grease.

Got the first spindle pumped full and halfway thru the second spindle, I heard a strange sound and the handle on the grease gun lost it's resistance. Something happened to the plunger and grease would no longer pump out of the hose. All of the grease was going past the plunger towards the bottom of the cylinder.

So, I quit working on it last night and decided I would pick up a new mini-grease gun while I was at Lowe's getting bird seed today. Got the new gun, brought it home and started using it. I managed to get the second spindle full of grease and started on the third one. Keep in mind that both grease guns were fully primed.

As I was starting to pump grease into the last spindle, I couldn't get it to take grease. It kept pumping it out around the zerk fitting. Turned out, this gun had a similar problem of not being able to generate enough pressure to pump grease past the valve in the zerk fitting.

So, I got out my air compressor and hooked up my nice pneumatic grease gun and finished the job. I would have done that in the first place had I known using a mini-grease gun was going to be such a PITA.

Little things like this drive me nuts when a job that should take 40 minutes takes a day or more.:mad:


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LeeMajors said:
You do know there's 99% chance the bearings on those spindles are sealed and get no grease then you grease them .
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Nope. Not these. They come empty and you have to grease them. They took three nine ounce tubes.

There are people that buy these spindles and don't grease them and after a few hours of use, they destroy themselves. Then they go online to Amazon or elsewhere and give a 1 star rating and bad review.
 
Please note: @Burt Gummer pointed this out to me. In the photo above, you can see the blades are mounted upside down. Those blades have only been mounted once prior to this job. The only reason I mounted them like that was because the part numbers on the blades are facing down towards the ground just like the OEM blades. The first time I mounted them, they were facing the correct way.

I just wasn't paying attention and I appreciate @Burt Gummer pointing it out to me.
 
Qball said:
I have no tolerance or patience for stupid unnecessary stuff that happens during a repair project.

Last week, one of the three deck spindles on my Cub Cadet bit the dust. So I got on Amazon and ordered a kit that came with three new spindles, new blade retaining nuts, new spindle mounting bolts, and a new belt.

Simple enough job. Yesterday evening, I remove the deck from the mower, remove the spindle shields, blades, and spindles. Install all of the new stuff, grab my mini-grease gun, and start pumping each spindle with lube. Each spindle takes exactly a full 3 ounce tube of grease.

Got the first spindle pumped full and halfway thru the second spindle, I heard a strange sound and the handle on the grease gun lost it's resistance. Something happened to the plunger and grease would no longer pump out of the hose. All of the grease was going past the plunger towards the bottom of the cylinder.

So, I quit working on it last night and decided I would pick up a new mini-grease gun while I was at Lowe's getting bird seed today. Got the new gun, brought it home and started using it. I managed to get the second spindle full of grease and started on the third one. Keep in mind that both grease guns were fully primed.

As I was starting to pump grease into the last spindle, I couldn't get it to take grease. It kept pumping it out around the zerk fitting. Turned out, this gun had a similar problem of not being able to generate enough pressure to pump grease past the valve in the zerk fitting.

So, I got out my air compressor and hooked up my nice pneumatic grease gun and finished the job. I would have done that in the first place had I known using a mini-grease gun was going to be such a PITA.

Little things like this drive me nuts when a job that should take 40 minutes takes a day or more.:mad:


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Big thread drift here. Why the fudge do people feel the need to feed birds? I see all sorts of birds all the time without the time and effort of feeding the useless little f’ers. Now if ‘i could capture pain in the arse squirrels to feed to the hawks I’s be all set. Those gay little birds aren’t worth carrying the 2 lb bag of seed to the register.
 
CZfool68 said:
Big thread drift here. Why the fudge do people feel the need to feed birds? I see all sorts of birds all the time without the time and effort of feeding the useless little f’ers. Now if ‘i could capture pain in the arse squirrels to feed to the hawks I’s be all set. Those gay little birds aren’t worth carrying the 2 lb bag of seed to the register.
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Off topic, (Sorry Dave!) , but I buy bird seed 50lbs at a time in the winter. And I may or may not shoot squirrels off the feeders.... it’s a double win.
 
Burt Gummer said:
Off topic, (Sorry Dave!) , but I buy bird seed 50lbs at a time in the winter. And I may or may not shoot squirrels off the feeders.... it’s a double win.
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First, we don’t really have a winter. Second, good on you for taking out them tree rats.
 
CZfool68 said:
Big thread drift here. Why the fudge do people feel the need to feed birds? I see all sorts of birds all the time without the time and effort of feeding the useless little f’ers. Now if ‘i could capture pain in the arse squirrels to feed to the hawks I’s be all set. Those gay little birds aren’t worth carrying the 2 lb bag of seed to the register.
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I LOL'd at this.
 
Qball said:
Nope. Not these. They come empty and you have to grease them. They took three nine ounce tubes.

There are people that buy these spindles and don't grease them and after a few hours of use, they destroy themselves. Then they go online to Amazon or elsewhere and give a 1 star rating and bad review.
Click to expand...
Thats what alot of people are told. Every mower I have put spindles on this year are the same as this video


 
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LeeMajors said:
Thats what alot of people are told. Every mower I have put spindles on this year are the same as this video


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A claw hammer? Are you kidding me? A guy who makes a living as a small engine mechanic and he beats on the shaft with a damn claw hammer.........................

.
 
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LeeMajors said:
Thats what alot of people are told. Every mower I have put spindles on this year are the same as this video
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I won't spend a lot of my time looking into it, and if you work on them for a living, I'll certainly take your word for it.

However, I can't for the life of me understand why MTD (and others) would put serviceable spindles on the mowers they manufacture and include them on the maintenance schedule to be greased every ten hours, if the spindles have non-serviceable bearings.

In addition to the above, I'm also puzzled why the new replacement spindles would come with zerk fittings if there exists no reason for them. To me, that seems odd at best.
 
LeeMajors said:
Thats what alot of people are told. Every mower I have put spindles on this year are the same as this video
Click to expand...


I just watched that video. It is interesting. I still have my old spindles. Mine are designed a little differently than the one in the video. On Wednesday, I'll take one of my old spindles apart and see if they have sealed bearings.

I'm not certain but I'm thinking that when the new spindles got full of grease, it would start oozing out under the pulley around the outside or inside of the bearing seal between the race and the seal. I'm quite certain it wasn't coming out around the pulley shaft. That at least possibly tells me that these new spindles have serviceable bearings.

I never paid attention in the past when I greased my old spindles. I just pumped a few times and let it go.

If this is as widespread as the video purports, and you as well, then it sounds to me like class action lawsuit material in my opinion.
 
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Try working on a newer Harley sometime. In their drive for form over function, they make you go around yer ass to get to yer elbow. If I want/need access to the main wiring harness (running through the backbone of the frame), in order to get enough slack in it to work with, I have to drop the rear wheel to get to an 'access panel' inside the rear fender to free up the 'slack loop' to be able to dink with the wiring for the speedo, tach, blinkers, idiot lights, etc. WTF?

Even better was putting cams in it. Gas tank has to come off to remove the valve covers (or cut the stock pushrods & replace them with adjustables), which isn't too heinous, but having to pull the entire exhaust system and right side foot controls to remove the cam cover is a royal PITA. Hell, you almost have to pull the exhaust to access the rear master cylinder.
 
Qball said:
Please note: @Burt Gummer pointed this out to me. In the photo above, you can see the blades are mounted upside down. Those blades have only been mounted once prior to this job. The only reason I mounted them like that was because the part numbers on the blades are facing down towards the ground just like the OEM blades. The first time I mounted them, they were facing the correct way.

I just wasn't paying attention and I appreciate @Burt Gummer pointing it out to me.
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Brilliant! Why the hell didn’t I think of that?

Installing the blades properly cuts the grass.

Installing them upside down should grow grass. :D
 
I know next to about nothing about mower decks, just to get that out of the way. That being said, I grease mine every spring on my JD X300 along with the other "stuff". In ten years I never had a problem with a spindle bearing. Last fall I took it in to have the 10 year old belt replaced that finally failed. They replaced on of the spindles but told me it was because it was bent. Perhaps they were just generating revenue, I'll never know the difference.

It seems pretty ridiculous that they would put sealed bearings and a zerk fitting on a spindle. Just my $0.02.
 
Okay. @LeeMajors was spot on. I didn't really doubt him because it seems based on his post that he works on them professionally.

I tore into one my old spindles and low and behold, both upper and lower bearings are sealed.

My only thinking on this is that the manufacturers got tired of dealing with customer service issues related to folks not lubing their spindles, so they started installing sealed bearings in their existing housings and just kept manufacturing the same housing with the hole for the zerk fitting. They just plug the hole with a zerk fitting to keep out dirt.

It would be nice if they would let those of us that do maintain our own equipment know that these zerk fittings are there to only prevent dirt from getting inside the housing. Another one of these: :mad: is applicable here. Live and learn I guess.

@LeeMajors Thanks for the heads up sir.

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Jeppo said:
Brilliant! Why the hell didn’t I think of that?

Installing the blades properly cuts the grass.

Installing them upside down should grow grass. :D
Click to expand...

Dang it! That was supposed to be a secret.:D
 
Qball said:
Okay. @LeeMajors was spot on. I didn't really doubt him because it seems based on his post that he works on them professionally.

I tore into one my old spindles and low and behold, both upper and lower bearings are sealed.

My only thinking on this is that the manufacturers got tired of dealing with customer service issues related to folks not lubing their spindles, so they started installing sealed bearings in their existing housings and just kept manufacturing the same housing with the hole for the zerk fitting. They just plug the hole with a zerk fitting to keep out dirt.

It would be nice if they would let those of us that do maintain our own equipment that these zerk fittings are there to only prevent dirt from getting inside the housing. Another one of these: :mad: is applicable here. Live and learn I guess.

@LeeMajors Thanks for the heads up sir.

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Thank you and you're welcome I've been working on this type stuff off and on for several years.

I did in fact open a shop full time the end of last year.
 
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