Deck Will Not Engage Craftsman LT1000

so craftsman lt-1000s like this one have got to be one of my most favorite mowers to flip they just plain don't get any simpler than these but with that simplicity they also come with a deck that does not like to sit and so if you end up with one of these that has been sitting more than a couple of years 99.5 of the time the deck is not going to work so today we're going to do a video on going through and figuring out why your craftsman lt deck will not engage we're going to cover everything from simplistic to rip it apart and put it back together and stuff it back under the machine let's get started stage one is the cable actually connected or doing anything i've seen it quite often where these will get hammered up as somebody's last straw and they will break the connection that's on the inside of here and vice versa they will also break this connection here where it connects to that spring now what you can't see is on the top of the pulley behind here let's see if i can bring this around on the top of this pulley is where it's connected now if i reach up and i go to move the lever you'll see the spring tighten up and that pulley should come back at us right now and see how it's not that's because that pivot is frozen and that right there is your number one reason why it is your lt 1000 deck will not engage where do we go from here from here we're going to drop this deck now one thing that is a pain about these lts is that the deck does not like to slide out from underneath the craftsman tractor you pretty much have got to find a way to jack up that front end at least a good solid six inches in my case i cheat and i use a winch and i jack the whole thing up to where it's easier for you guys to see but before you even start on this figure out how you're going to get that front end up on something if you use the cinder block method like i see a lot of you do make sure to put some tire chucks behind this so you don't run yourself over now those of you who are quite eagle-eyed you might have noticed that this thing is currently doing the chevy in the front i'll take five seconds to show you why that is it's a really easy fix on these [Music] lts i'm really not going up that high you could easily do this on cinder blocks at home i raise it a little further because it lets me get the camera there for you but why is this currently doing the chevy so let me come over here as you can see those are kicked way out so what happens is this one here the only thing connecting it across is the tie rod in the back so if we look at that tie rod it should be running level across here as you can see it is all the way up to the point it is hitting the frame you can see a mark in the frame that tie rod is supposed to be straight it is bowed all the way around see that bow so what you do is you unpin it from that side and then you come over here and you unpin it from this side and you gotta push down on the side and then lift it up and out sometimes and vice versa you throw it into a vise you straighten it all out if it is bent to the point that has been weakened you weld a piece of angle iron onto it with the angle pointing down you want the triangle side pointing down and the reason being is because if you put it with triangle side up it'll hit on the frame right here so just a piece of half inch angle iron will reinforce that but at this point let's talk about this deck so what we're going to do is we're going to get this dropped off the first thing we're going to do is we're going to roll this belt off of here which is easy enough to do when that pulley thing is working correctly it's not right now so it's going to suck so it's easier to do sometimes is to undo this pin here in the front let me come around what's easier to do sometimes is to undo this pin in the front then come back here and undo this pin and undo this pin and shift this whole side of the deck forward to be able to drop that belt off now that's this side on the other side we've got a little hidden thing going on here on the other side we have this pulley piece up here and i'm going to try and stick my finger through right here there is a cotter pin that cotter pin comes off so that this spring lifts up off of the top of this pulley then on the back of your deck you will have another cotter pin right here that you're going to have to pull out there's going to be a little piece on the front and then you're going to pull this out and set that whole cable out the rear end of the machine always do this first before you undo this cotter pin here because if you don't do it first the whole deck comes down onto it and you can't get it to come loose so always do that cotter pin the very last thing at that point this whole thing comes forward a little bit and you can undo this cotter pin on this side right here now i bet you want to see me try and go and do it all on camera now providing that nobody has decided to get in here and do any stupid ghetto stuff like cram a nail in one of these all you should need is just a flathead screwdriver to remove this you might happen to need a hammer to tap the side or something in order to get it to come loose but they should pop off and then pry off now this one you want to be careful because it's easy to have it come loose and smash across the back of the frame and slice the top of your hand off now i'm going to see if i can get the see if i can get that belt to come off and i got lucky it came off it was loose enough but otherwise i would uh pop this off like i'm going to do now and i would have just tipped the thing forward and it would have come off now the thing about doing this is you can reach across and get to the cable nice and easy now when you go to undo the cable you're going to pull the big giant cotter pin out the cable piece is going to come back and then it's going to go towards this side through a slot in the metal bracket after that you pull the small cotter pin that's on top of the pulley you lift up the spring you set the whole thing out the rear of the machine now we undo that we undo the other side and go from there and guess what somebody did something dumb on the front they put a couple of big giant okay well we're going to get these ones off then we're going to go and take a grinder to those ones [Applause] so those are supposed to be just quick pull pins somebody decided to go and put the wrong thing in don't be a cheapskate don't bother trying to reuse these simply slice it with a grinder punch them out call it good replace it with what's supposed to be there all right let's see if we can do it using the prying technique there it goes much easier there we go now we'll do the other side the prying technique and we have the deck loose and we can slide it out and take a look at it there we go so hopefully you can hear me over my hot water tank homemade air compressor out back so that belt goes like that and goes like that and goes there so your cable goes through here the spring piece goes here and this should go that way in order to engage and as you can see it won't do it so underneath here there's a pivot so we're going to clean this all off and we're going to take apart the pivot and on a side note that little washer there is way more important than you think it is because it keeps your spring from going down on there and if you forget it before you know it this will slice through your spring and then you're out a 10 to 15 dollar spring and uh 10 to 15 dollar cable and most likely your pulley will have burrs on it that slices belts set that aside it is very important [Music] that is something we were looking for we'll get back to that later all right let's see if we can get this to come alive on camera so there's a carriage bolt here with a 9 16 on it and i'm gonna undo it to the point that stuff should come loose so this when the cable pulls on it goes this direction so now that i broke everything free like it ought to be we should be able to watch this come back like so which hits the brake which hits the brake which undoes that which undoes that and everything spins then when you let off this right here pulls here and brings it nicely back around and into position which this one's not doing now what happens is underneath here there are rollers that are on the end of these and those can get jammed up stuck worn out there's a roller here underneath this one that can get jammed up stuck worn out and that pivot needs to be torn apart so we're going to pull this all the way off we're going to unstack this so you've got nut we've got the pulley there you're gonna sand that down nice and smooth you're going to have a really big thick washer that is going to be directional see how it's got a directional side in it that goes down and so what happens is that right there it's supposed to pivot around on and as you can see it gets filled with all kinds of rust and it doesn't work anymore so there's that and then this piece here can then come out and up like so that washer comes off to get cleaned up and last but not least don't lose your carriage bolt so we're gonna sand and clean all of this up then we're gonna get some anti-seize we're gonna lube everything in between put it all back together okay so we got our can of anti-seize here and we are going to liberally glob that on there and take our washer stick our washer on there liberally gob that okay now we need to take this and remember that you check those rollers make sure they actually roll which they do we're going to take this and we're going to bring it down so that this goes around that roller like so and then that buns up against that roller and then bring it around and line it up with our hole so now we have this that yet again gets another liberal globe then we stuff it in there then it gets another liberal glob on top and then we take this and we flip it up and we put it right there and at this point you should be able to put your carriage bolt up through everything and put that down on now to my knowledge there is no torque spec on this so what i have come to the conclusion of is that [Music] if you get it to the point that it tightens up definitely and then come a couple of ogres off it's usually about the right spot so that's tightened up definitely so i can't move it and right in there is a little too loose way too loose things are better off done by hand so we're going to loosen it up just a little bit and make sure that everything moves there we go that moves like that okay now what i see is a lot of people all of a sudden think they're done and the reason being is because of this rotted off spring that doesn't exist anymore when they go to take the belt uh take the deck apart there we go so what you do now is at tractor supply you have c239 it's a double pack and you basically cut it in half and bend the ends out and that gives you your homemade version of that so you're going to have that piece right there this is gonna come all the way out here and now when you pull this like so it's going to pull back after everything is all lubed up correctly you've got your spring in place this is how it should work so from here to here the cable pulls and then you let go of the cable there we go now we throw it back in underneath so when you go to put it back in you're going to lift it up you're going to put in these you're going to put in this back bar back here and you're going to put your fronts in also while you're here don't be lazy about it get it done do your blades right now well they're the easiest to get to they're ever going to be on these craftsmans it's really easy to just grab a 9 16 and look at look at them right there and most of the time even a crummy little 200 pound ogadoga will usually take off the craftsman ones if you're dealing with bigger mtds with the ginormous 24 millimeter bolts for these well they're nuts actually those on the other hand those can take a thousand pounds to take off at times but these just a quick okadoga and you're back to cutting remember that steering bar that we talked about earlier i figured i'd show you guys what i meant when i took it out that's supposed to be straight so from here to right here you should be able to strike a straight line so i'm gonna throw that in the vise and beat it until it's relatively straight again and then we'll get the deck thrown on so i got the one in here the one in there and the one on the other side of that deck and that one over there is way easier to do if you put the whole thing level on the ground and then attach it in fact all of this putting it back on is way easier if you drop the whole thing to the ground with the deck underneath it now the reason why i have this up is for you guys on youtube land we're going to talk about this cable down here so before we get underneath here we've got our washer we've got our small cotter pin and we got our big rear cotter pin so i'm going to try to do all this one-handed while holding this camera we'll see how well that goes so we've got our cable here and our cable goes through the back and i almost made a booboo remember that washer that i told you about that washer goes right on top of here and then our cable or spring rather goes on top of there if i can get my stupid finger out of the way there we go so washer spring small cotter pin now it's funny because this is on the other side of the machine but it's actually easier to do from this side so now yet again i'll try and do this one-handed we're going to take the rear of this and we're going to pull it enough that the cable goes through here but this piece has to stay forward so now we put that in there we take this and we push this back and then we have our really big obnoxious cotter pin and on one side there is a hole that this goes in and on the other side a groove that it clicks through so we're going to see if we can find that one-handed here there we go give it a shove there it goes whoops too far right there so there we are our cable is now attached and now we need to do this one and we need to do this one and yet again it's a lot easier to do if the machine is all the way down on the ground and level so we'll just set it down whoop wrong button down we go there we are ah here we go again okay so uh oh i made a big giant boo-boo can anybody tell me what big giant boo-boo i just made that bar is right there ah all right so rather than rip this whole thing apart you can take this out pull it out the other side flip it around and then put it on which is what i'm going to do but while we're here we'll take this lifting bar and we'll bring that around and we're going to have to lift this up a little bit and put it on there but we'll be back there we go so we got the deck panhard bar flipped around that goes like that we grab a cotter pin throw the cotter pin in like that and we've got that one in there and at this point all we gotta do is get that put on there there is a routing chart right here if you need it and we'll see if this thing does something here's a side note tech tip for you while we're here dealing with this if you want to drain the oil out of one of these and don't want it all over your frame just take your average soda can or whatever beverage of choice slice the ends off right there and right there and then you can stick it up in there and it'll drain out into your folgers can that fits behind your tire that's just my tech tip i'm passing on for today oh there we go let's see if it'll actually engage now shall we [Music] ah [Music] here we go

Channel: RedneckComputerGeek

Views: 145,283

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Id: Nckf_E7gfhw

Length: 26min 20sec (1580 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 26 2021