Toro ZTR Cutting Poorly

[nickscuttingedgelawn]

I just dropped off my mower this afternoon after a long day of working. When I started this morning the mower was cutting the lawn fine but the lawn was clumping and there was nothing different about the lawn then other times so I just double cut it. Later in the day I started getting a knocking noise from under the deck when the blades were first engaged and cutting quality decreased rather quickly. By the time I got to my last lawn the deck was rattling most of the time and you could see the three spots where the blades cut but it left spots in between the blades. Not to mention I had to cut the lawns 4 or 5 times just to get all the grass cut.

The mower has 960 hours on it and it is mostly orginal. I believe its a toro z447 with the 48 in turbo force deck.

When the machine had its winter service done they told me I needed new spindles and idler pulleys but i declined this service as I really didnt see the need to sink another 600 into this mower.

My question is would spindles and idlers cause a huge decrease in cutting quality or am I missing something else

thanks

nick

[viper00085]

Unfort yes, if the spindles have some serious bearing play and wear in them it can let the blades move around and loose the tip to tip overlap and clearances with the baffles designed in the deck and hurt cutting performance. the bearing drag from damaged brgs, and bad idler brgs can also be costing horspower to the blades and actually be slowing down your blade speed causing cut issues.

Now the knocking when engaging could be attributed to all the spindle issues, but also if you look on the LH side of the deck you will see a idler arm that the spring is hooked to. When it moves backwards during engagment it has a "stop" bracket it hits sticking up from the back of the deck and it should have a little "pad/cushion" riveted to it. The pad gets worn or damaged after a while and then the idler arm has metal to metal contact with that stop bracket and makes those fews knocks until the blades get up to speed. Nothing special there other than installng a new cushion and rivets.

[nickscuttingedgelawn]

Unfort yes, if the spindles have some serious bearing play and wear in them it can let the blades move around and loose the tip to tip overlap and clearances with the baffles designed in the deck and hurt cutting performance. the bearing drag from damaged brgs, and bad idler brgs can also be costing horspower to the blades and actually be slowing down your blade speed causing cut issues.

Now the knocking when engaging could be attributed to all the spindle issues, but also if you look on the LH side of the deck you will see a idler arm that the spring is hooked to. When it moves backwards during engagment it has a "stop" bracket it hits sticking up from the back of the deck and it should have a little "pad/cushion" riveted to it. The pad gets worn or damaged after a while and then the idler arm has metal to metal contact with that stop bracket and makes those fews knocks until the blades get up to speed. Nothing special there other than installng a new cushion and rivets.


Viper thank you for the reply they called earlier and all the spindles and pulleys are bad on the deck.....wow its pricey stuff haha....the blades were actually hitting the inside of the mower deck on one side the bearings were so shot....I got to use a bad boy mower today for work and man those things are sick the electronic deck is my favorite part, or maybe 30 horespowers vs 19 on my toro