Riding Lawn Mower Trouble

Helloooo everyone! I hope all is well with you. Today, I wanted to share with you all a little bit about our riding lawn mower, Grayson. Yes, it too has a name. It seems that we have pretty much named all of the motorized vehicles that we’ve owned – cars, trucks, tractor, law mower. The kids seem to enjoy it too because they get choices in the names.

For a little bit of history, Grayson came to us by way of Milwaukee from Deidra’s Dad. He had it sitting out in the garage and wasn’t using it, so he sent it down on the same trip as Herman (our tractor). It has been a really good little Craftsman mower, although at the beginning of the mowing season I had to replace the carburetor.

The Back Story

Usually, when we go out to the property, we will take the riding lawn mower to cut the low grass in a few areas. Well, on one of our last trips out to the property to bush hog the pasture, I had my daughter cutting an area and she sort of hit a stump. Actually, Grayson hit it so hard that it turned off. I didn’t think much of it, told her to be careful about what she mows over and to crank it back up to keep going. When she did, I noticed the mower deck having too much movement on one side. I had her to turn it off and back on again and cut a little more. We both thought it didn’t sound right. So, I had her to go park it and turn it off until we left. I would just fix it later. No big deal, right?

Wrong!

Last weekend, I decided to go out to the garage and fix the mower. After doing a quick assessment, I found out that a steel stabilizer bar had lost a pin. It attaches underneath the front of the mower and connects to the mowing deck. This would explain why the mower deck was wobbly when my daughter restarted the mower a couple of weekends ago. No biggie, we’ll just head out to our local tool store and get another cotter pin.

We went to get the pins and came back to fix the mower. The idea was to get our son out in the garage and have him to do the work, so he can get dirty. As we got ready to reattach the steel arm, we hit the first sign of trouble.

Bent Metal

The piece of metal where the arm attached underneath the front of the tractor had bent. Well, shoot we have “motivators” around the house. I went and grabbed my hand ax that had a hammer on the other end. The axe head was heavy and swinging it would surely motivate any metal to move back into place. After both my son and I did some banging and bending, we got it to a point to where I thought it would work.

We attached the bar to the mower deck and slipped in the cotter pin. The kiddo bent up the pin to secure it and we moved on to the front. We attached the bar to the front support and had to use a little motivation to force the pin into the hole. Then we bent the ends to secure it too and WALAH! Time to test it out.

And Then…

We moved the mower out the garage, so that we could start it up and make a few passes across the grass. As we did this, my son said that the blade was sticking out. It turned out that one of the riding lawn mower blades was scratching across the driveway. So, I thought to myself, “that can’t be right”. Then my son said that the blade was bent, followed by the confirmation by my wife. *I hang my head*

You have got to be kidding me. I guess that causal accident with the stump out at the property wasn’t so casual at all. Turns out it was a one sided fight and Grayson got beat up pretty bad. After jacking up the mower again to pull off the blade, below is what we got.

Arrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! Now, I just have to go get a blade to put on the mower, however this was not supposed to be the case. It was supposed to be some $1 cotter pin replacements and that was it. Oh well. There seems to never be a dull moment when trying to homestead. The good thing is that my son got to bang on some steel, take some stuff apart, and we got to spend some time fixing stuff.

Whelp, until the next adventure folks, take care!