Case J44 mower deck

The main drive pulley on this J44 mower deck is quite noisy. I've never seen this type of extension on a pulley. It is the top portion of this drive pulley thay is wobbly and hence noisy. All other pulleys are tight. My problem is I don't know how to separate that top pulley. The one picture shows the inside of the pulley is chewed up a bit but it still grabs enough to still power the whole deck. There is a flat spot on the shaft under that top pulley and it appears to take a 1-1/4 inch wrench but I don't want to wrench on it and mess up the inside further.
I cannot find any reference to this type of pulley extension in any Case material. Any ideas?
TIA

I would call Barneveld Equipment 608-924-1662 they are very helpful and have tons of knowledge and NOS parts for these Case machines. Have your model and serial number ready when you call.

The whole affair looks like someone modified the deck for some unknown reasons in the past.


The J44 deck used a Case C15604 spindle shaft. You can see from parts diagrams and/or pictures of the shaft that the pulleys were held to the
shaft with #11 woodruff keys, and that the keys (and therefore, the pulleys) were spaced fairly close together. All the pulleys were held to
the spindle shafts with 3/4 NF jam lock nuts.

I can't tell if the chewed up inside of the drive pulley you describe is a damaged jam lock nut, or perhaps something not as tall as the nuts
on the two other spindle shafts. Also, the pictures suggest that the damaged jam lock nut (if it is one) is quite a bit higher than the top
of spindle shaft should be. It looks like the bottom part of the extension is brighter than the top level. From the angle of the pictures,
I can't see if the top portion is also brighter.

One possibility that I can imagine is that someone used something like a 3/4 shaft coupler to attach an extension shaft to the spindle shaft.
What you see may be an outer sleeve that just provides a little more support. The other possibility I can imagine is that the extension you see
has a bottom that screws onto the spindle shaft and a similar top that allows the top drive pulley to attached to the extension.

I'm a geezer killing time on the internet, and not an experienced mower mechanic.

After reading Wore out's response, and found a fair number of examples of stacked pullies used on mower decks. Some are idler while others are
drive pullies. A search on stacked pulley or stacked drive pulley will give you some examples. However, I still haven't seen any
examples of an extender being used to add a second pulley above original pulley shown in all the parts diagrams. I would agree that the
noise is coming from the spindle bearings. The deck is old, and the extending the height of the drive pulley would have to put more strain on
the bearings.

The OP's first problem is figuring out how to remove the pullies so that he can replace the bearings. I still feel that the key to this
problem is determining whether the extended pulley is attached to the original spindle shaft with a badly abused nut, or whether the the
original shaft has been extended in some manner. I suppose that whoever added the extension may have started by using a spindle shaft from an
outer spindle (which would have been even shorter.)

If the affair is attached to the original shaft, I would think the nut on top would have to be removed by unscrewing or cutting/breaking it.
If the shaft has been extended in some fashion, only someone who has made or seen such an extension would know for sure how to remove it. I can't imagine how
using a wrench on the flat portions of the extension could damage anything if it was turned the right direction.

I had a 446 with a 48 inch deck. As others have said, my pulleys were stacked right on top of each
other. What is the reason for it being raised so high? If it were me, I would consider getting a
new shaft and top pulley. You can try holding the spacer with a crescent and un-threading the
pulley. No matter what, it has to come apart to fix.

Either they didn't have access to OEM pulley, or I wondered if this one had a power bagger on it. Or belt issues.