ray...
The happy Nada Farmer, balancing and making "run true" everything I can.
Keep coming back, page Sixty Seven follows......soon.
Mowing the lawn is an annoyance, though I do get time to think about stuff .
In that endeavor I was approached by a neighbor about buying a mower from him, he had seen the number of Cub Cadets I have working, and not, around here and thought I might be interested in a 1989 
Cub Cadet 1772 model, which has a little diesel engine. And a 60 inch deck. The price seemed reasonable, and the guy is a mechanic, so I expected, well you ever hear about the auto mechanics car being a piece of ...... Work? Have you heard there is no such thing as a free lunch? Have you noticed I end up working on everything I own? Way more than normal people? Well this is no exception. I actually rode it home from his house, a little over 1.25 miles, on a gravel road. It was awful! The steering was set wrong, no toe in, so it wandered from side to side like a drunken sailor. But that is an easy fix, alignment! I found out what the "toe in" should be, and fixed that in one twist of a wrench. Then I mowed with it, it ran for nearly an hour, then it suddenly started vibrating so bad, I thought I had blown the engine! My feet, and some other lower extremities were numb and buzzing by the time I turned it off, and that was "as fast as I could" because I wanted to minimize the damage. I checked everything I could, deck, blades, even rotated the engine over a couple times by hand, {not easy with a hot diesel!} but everything looked and felt okay. So I restarted it, wwwhhhaaaammmmm! I turned it right back off. Then I noticed the center "hump" was only held on by two, of eight, screws. So I got a torx wrench and took them out. 
The center drive shaft was, upon restarting, running about a half inch 'out of round', "off center" about to fling itself out of the frame entirely.
I coasted the tractor down to the garage, and started a week long process of rebuilding the drive line. It had been "messed with" in an attempt to "fix it!" But no investment was made to accomplish it. Of course I can't entirely discount the time, and welding, and washers, that were invested, I guess that counts, but no attempt was made to accomplish a "balancing" of the revolving shaft, so the effort involved was basically doomed from the start. He did show me all the washers he had welded on in other parts of the tractor in an attempt to remount the entire rear unit which is basically a hydrostatic transmission, (or a hydraulic pump and hydraulic motor tied together) with an implement drive shaft in an almost entirely inaccessible place, and a hint that a small three point hitch might be an available attachment.
The next issue was a leak in a hydraulic line, that had been brazed and stress cracked (or maybe a bad braze due to dirt and oil?) in any event, I managed to re braze it, and stop the leak for about two additional hours of run time. Then I got it hung up on a rock.
This unit has a hydraulic lift for the deck, I have yet to see a deck with a hydraulic lift lift more than an inch, it's a stupid design, there is so much "mechanism" there is no room for "travel", and after a few hundred hours of everything rattling around, the wear removes any hope of using that remaining amount of travel.
So, it was on a large rock and I had to get the truck to pull it off. Then I noticed an oil leak had started, the braze had failed. But having used it for a couple days, I had decided I liked the way it mowed by then, and it would be worth investing some real effort into fixing it up, properly. I had already done some work to the drive shaft, it wasn't right, but it was better, it still needed a $115.00 part that I had a backorder on, well I had a back order on a part to make one for it, that wasn't $115.00 dollars but would end up more like $35.00 so the drive shaft still wobbled, but the run out was only about .030 so it shook a little, but, it was better, and my nether regions weren't falling asleep.
I decided to remake the leaking line rather than attempt another braze fix, as it wasn't lasting a whole day anyway. After a couple attempts I finally got a good line made and installed, and left the center console open to check for leaks. WOW what an eye opener! The entire hydrostatic mess in the rear was moving! A LOT! When I checked, there were three bolts holding the rear end in place instead of eight! And they were all loose, or, well not holding for one reason or another. One "ear" that had been cast in the unit, was broken off, and the other was totally unconnected. It was pointed out when I bought it, that one bolt was replaced with a larger bolt because it had stripped out, I thought it a right and reasonable fix, I didn't notice any other missing bolts or things, but I never thought to look that closely. I took it on a fifty foot mow, it worked, I bought it, and drove it home.
In seeking advice or information online, I have learned, that this drive shaft is a known headache. And I think I know why. You see the replacement part, which I did end up buying, was a piece of cast crap! Oh it was drilled and bored and splined quite nicely, about .100 inch off center of the casting! Okay, a tenth of an inch, big deal, right? Well, actually, it is, this piece rotates at 2000 RPM. it is supported on "rag disks" which are supposed to dampen out vibrations and remove misalignment issues. Unfortunately the shaft, and all it's pieces, which include a centrifugal clutch and fan blade, are not in any way balanced, additionally the hodge podge of bolts and washers and nuts that were on it, were not a help either. 
I was pretty upset when I originally took it all apart and found the mess it was, I mean look at the part to the left here. Washers welded at random angles with no attempt to even make it look balanced. But after trying to talk to anyone knowledgeable at MTD, which has a dearth of people who even understand the question, let alone have an inkling about an answer, well I guess I shouldn't expect so much from "a world leader in lawn care equipment" I mean look at the current world leaders, they can't balance anything, either! So after being assured that I had just received a faulty part and should send it back and wait for 4 more days to find the next part was similarly faulty, I just balanced it myself. I have a grinder and a lathe and a mill, who needs MTD?
So I reshaped it to be very much more on center, the rest of the shaft had been rebuilt, I made new plastic cushions for the centrifugal clutch, welded and re cut the shaft ends, and replaced all the hardware with fine threaded bolts cut to the same length, matching washers, and nylock nuts. it's a thing of beauty. And it runs true, the vibrations are now the result of a diesel engine in a small tractor. It still needs a lot of work, the deck height issue and a tendency to change speeds on it's own are all related to worn control plates and shafts, and the fact that the center console was held in place, quite ineffectively, by three, of should have been four, bolts that had vibrated loose, probably, like everything else, due to the vibrating drive shaft. And the starter needs a "wrench smack" to get it to start sometimes, ( though I found, that was not the actual problem, it was a couple worn out sta-kon clips on a safety switch, replaced them and "viola" starts every time no whack! ) I also suspect it has the wrong fluid as hydraulic, it's obviously automotive transmission fluid now, and I suspect it should really be thirty weight oil, but I'll find out when I go looking for more information. I don't intend to make it pretty, but I do intend to try to make it mechanically beautiful.
(I'll add more soon as I wrecked it soon after this was done.)
