Larry EC-OH
Member
Well, for those of you that have already done this, you know what a pleasant experience it is....
I just traded off my X300 for a new X500 (which has still not arrived yet). I decided to mow the yard one more time. First I ran out of gas, then I was almost done when the mower came to a stop and wouldn't move in any direction. Got off and sure enough, the drive belt was broken. Looked up the part number, called mother Deere, they had one.
Picked it up and the parts man said "this is a pain in the rear to change, my advise pick up lots of beer on the way home". Got home (no beer), took off the mower deck, crawled under there to discover why the belt failed. Disintegrated idler pulley (some really fine plastic in this piece), looked up the part number, called mother Deere, they had one. Did I mention it's a 30 mile trip one way to get parts? To make matters worse, technically it's not even my tractor, it's mother Deere's.
Got home and spent the good part of an hour unwinding the remnants of the old belt off of the transmission housing. Found a key in the mess and had to refer to the parts diagram to figure out where the key went. (Transmission control link) Undid the bolts on the steering arms and fed the belt onto the front engine pulley (above the electric clutch) and onto the transmission pulley. I tried to figure how to thread the belt onto the idler pulleys for a good while before I gave up and went and looked at the parts diagram one more time. Turns out that only one side of the belt goes through the idlers.
Hooked everything back up, started the engine and it did not move.... Discovered that I forgot to push the lever for transport mode back in. Pushed it back into proper position and success!
So what started out to be a two hour mowing job took 9.5 hours. First time I got to use the headlights.
Maybe the beer idea wasn't so bad after-all.
Larry
I just traded off my X300 for a new X500 (which has still not arrived yet). I decided to mow the yard one more time. First I ran out of gas, then I was almost done when the mower came to a stop and wouldn't move in any direction. Got off and sure enough, the drive belt was broken. Looked up the part number, called mother Deere, they had one.
Picked it up and the parts man said "this is a pain in the rear to change, my advise pick up lots of beer on the way home". Got home (no beer), took off the mower deck, crawled under there to discover why the belt failed. Disintegrated idler pulley (some really fine plastic in this piece), looked up the part number, called mother Deere, they had one. Did I mention it's a 30 mile trip one way to get parts? To make matters worse, technically it's not even my tractor, it's mother Deere's.
Got home and spent the good part of an hour unwinding the remnants of the old belt off of the transmission housing. Found a key in the mess and had to refer to the parts diagram to figure out where the key went. (Transmission control link) Undid the bolts on the steering arms and fed the belt onto the front engine pulley (above the electric clutch) and onto the transmission pulley. I tried to figure how to thread the belt onto the idler pulleys for a good while before I gave up and went and looked at the parts diagram one more time. Turns out that only one side of the belt goes through the idlers.
Hooked everything back up, started the engine and it did not move.... Discovered that I forgot to push the lever for transport mode back in. Pushed it back into proper position and success!
So what started out to be a two hour mowing job took 9.5 hours. First time I got to use the headlights.
Maybe the beer idea wasn't so bad after-all.
Larry
