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I’ve owned 3 mowers with these rubber hub caps and I’m just sick of dealing with them. I know there’s a couple of tricks to making removal easier but I’m not interested in making them easier to deal with - I just want a different set up. I was considering making my own using PVC pipe caps but thought I’d ask if there were other options/ideas.

I did find some chrome hub caps using google but I’m just interested in keeping the hubs sealed, not drift racing.

Thanks.

I use a heat gun to soften them up and they come right off or go right on.

Hammermechanicman said:

I use a heat gun to soften them up and they come right off or go right on.

Click to expand...

Same here...

And I will make the heat gun trifecta.
Machine the lip off the bushes & push them int the middle of the wheel .
Fit a pair of lipped sealed ball bearings on the wheels and then the caps are not needed

[Note: this seems like a pretty easy going forum, but since a message board can’t convey tone and intent, regardless of its emoji selection, I just want to say right now that I’m not or even - just adding to the conversation because it helps me]

I’m very happy to hear you guys are content using a heat gun on them - I won’t discourage you from doing so - but like I said, I’m not interested in making them easier to remove/install, I just want something else on there. My reason is purely for my own convenience/preference, as well as the challenge of coming up with solutions for things like this.

Even if I was OK with using a heat gun, sometimes I’m working on it in the back shed and I don’t have electricity there, so the heat gun wouldn’t always be an option anyway.

bertsmobile1 said:

And I will make the heat gun trifecta.
Machine the lip off the bushes & push them int the middle of the wheel .
Fit a pair of lipped sealed ball bearings on the wheels and then the caps are not needed

Click to expand...

Do the original bushings serve an additional purpose by removing the lip and pushing them into the center? When I first got this mower the right front bushings were in terrible condition (wheel wobbled as it rotated) and it started to wear into the spindle. Just to get through the season I put a set of roller bearings on both front wheels, but tossed the old bushings as I didn’t see the point in keeping them.

Part of my plans for this mower during the winter is to install new spindles - I’d be willing to add bushings in the middle of the wheel, but it seems like the roller bearings are carrying the load so I’m not understanding what the purpose would be. If it’s to help support the wheel, wouldn’t they still need grease and, therefore, hub caps still be required?

YEs it supplies extra support to the hub and spreads the load along the full length of the axle .
It is a bad design which loads up the end of the axel with wat too much force.
I think they did make the axel longer for a season or tow and then it rips up the bushes in the king pin
The axel is simply too short for the wheel
If it has not worn too badly I have had success fitting a long Toro front roller bearing from a ZTR caster on the outside & a std deep groove ball on the inside/
And yes you need it to be kept greasy,
When knocked in you need to grind off the lip and extend the cut out to clear the grease nipple.
Last time I checked prices for a customer the right side axel / king pin was around the $ 200 mark but the left was near $ 400 ( Aus) and currently unavailable.

bertsmobile1 said:

YEs it supplies extra support to the hub and spreads the load along the full length of the axle .
It is a bad design which loads up the end of the axel with wat too much force.
I think they did make the axel longer for a season or tow and then it rips up the bushes in the king pin
The axel is simply too short for the wheel
If it has not worn too badly I have had success fitting a long Toro front roller bearing from a ZTR caster on the outside & a std deep groove ball on the inside/
And yes you need it to be kept greasy,
When knocked in you need to grind off the lip and extend the cut out to clear the grease nipple.
Last time I checked prices for a customer the right side axel / king pin was around the $ 200 mark but the left was near $ 400 ( Aus) and currently unavailable.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the insight - it’s gotten some [pun intended] wheels turning in my head for reinforcing the front axle and hubs.

The spindle isn’t worn into very badly but I was going to replace the spindles because it looked like it’s slightly bent (relative to the left) but that might just be my crooked eyesight. I’ll get a better look at them once I get the axle apart and can do a thorough inspection.

I use a pair of them or a similar bearing if the axel is in reasonable condition for the rollers to run on but if the axel is severely undercut you have to fit a bearing with an inner race to bridge the wear .
For that it was a double row flanged bearing I got from a local bearing supplier after the wear was built up with Davcon .
It was a toss up between that & a crowded race needle roller, but I don't like using them with grease .
Nothing in the Stens catalogue was good enough for a badly worn axel as the balls cracked the inner races .
There seems to be way too much radial force on that outer bearing which I presume is why it is a bush,
I now use bentonite grease in there if the bushes & axel are in a reasonable condition which holds up to the pressure much better than the lithium grease specified when doing routine servicing with the wheel pulled forward til the grease exudes from the back then pushed hard back till grease exudes around the front, but it wastes a lot of grease.
I have also used a modified 215-305 which is too short so has to be packed out using a cut down bush on the outer and a flanged ball on the inner .
The other mowers that use the same set up don't seem to have the same sorts of problems and it does not seem such a problem with the LX series JD's .
To me I feel the original bush is both too hard & too short as the replaceable item should wear in favour of the non replaceable part so the bush should flog out but there was hardly any wear in any of them even when the axel was worn near 1/3 of its diameter.
The very first time I came across this I turned up a full length bush in LG 2 ( 85-5-5-5 to some ) but I don't know how that went because the owner sold it once I got the wheels to sit vertical & the mower to steer strait.

Just remember that I only have about 30 or so JD's in the entire repair run so I don't see all that many of them and the bulk seem to hold up with new bushes & bentonite or a 267 at the back a new bush at the front but all of them were well used before I got a spannar on any .

From memory I did find one wheel where the grease nipple prevented a 267 being fitted at the back.

I actually thought it must be a local users problem because if every one had the same problems as i am coming across then the forum would have been full of failed wheel posts or perhaps the entire axel / king pin assembly is cheap enough in the US to be a service replacement item but at $ 1000 for the job down here it is a find a cheaper work around job.

That’s it! I’m adapting my front axle for a sealed hub & bearing assembly off a boat trailer - that’ll fix this problem!

The roller bearings I put on earlier this year were just run of the mill sealed ball bearings (with a lip) available from any hardware or implement store (in the US anyway) as I needed to get the mower going. They did just fine as far as I can tell, but I’m yet to get the front end apart and see if there’s been any further wear.

I see what you’re saying about the bulk of the load being on the outer bearing, however I’m not sure adding the bushings in the middle of the wheel is the only solution. What I noticed when I was replacing them is there’s room for the bushings to move relative to each other and slide in and out of the hub, if only a small amount (and maybe that was due to them already being worn). It seems to me there’s 2 parts to the solution:

1) The bushings (or bearings) need to be tied together to prevent movement relative to each other. This could easily be a accomplished using a spacer or heavy duty spring, but there would need to be an axle nut in order to keep them tight to one another.

2) The spindle needs to have machine polished surfaces in the areas that the bushings ride, as opposed to riding on the powder coating. Once that powder coating starts coming off it’s the equivalent of having sand in there - at that point, the type of grease doesn’t much matter. The best you could do otherwise is grease them more frequently to help minimize contamination.

OK,
I must have written the wrong bearing number down in the notes but good of you to pick it so others will check before they order the wrong bearings.
My notes can become a right royal mess particularly if a job comes back, like the JD did a couple of times for a warranty repair as was the case with the first 2 wheel failures.
Long story.
The bushes had collapsed / worn to the point that the wheel itself was badly damaged so I had to machine the ends of the hub square again .
Mind you the owner had been driving it with the wheels rubbing on the frame so bad it had actually made wear grooves in the steel and in the tie rods .
So yes customer neglect is a big problem .
I am not an engineer so I am sure there are better engineered solutions but it is a case of do what I can with what I have in hand or can get quickly for a reasonable price .
I have never bothered to measure up a Husky and a Deere and compare them side to side , test the hardness of the axels or bushes it is just something I have noticed, that the JD's seem to eat the axels and the Huskys don't .
As for fitting tapered rollers, also good luck.
The axels should be hardened so threading them will be interesting and averting a brittle fracture from the roots of the threads will also be interesting

Fitting tapered roller bearings to the spindles will be fun indeed. And while I’m at it, I’m making this beast zero turn!

Ok, so my comments about the boat trailer hubs and making it zero turn were mostly in jest, however I do intend to explore options on tying the bearings together somehow. It’ll be in my garage the whole winter so I’ll have time to mess with it.

That said, I could’ve sworn some years ago that JD had introduced a zero turn lawn tractor, but I’m not finding anything about it anywhere (I have poor google skills). Am I imagining that? It wouldn’t surprise me if it only lasted a couple years, but any search using any combination of “John Deere zero turn lawn tractor” only nets results for the platform type zero turns.

I just figured if I’m gonna do some custom work, why not look at all the possibilities?

Gumby83 said:

Ok, so my comments about the boat trailer hubs and making it zero turn were mostly in jest, however I do intend to explore options on tying the bearings together somehow. It’ll be in my garage the whole winter so I’ll have time to mess with it.

That said, I could’ve sworn some years ago that JD had introduced a zero turn lawn tractor, but I’m not finding anything about it anywhere (I have poor google skills). Am I imagining that? It wouldn’t surprise me if it only lasted a couple years, but any search using any combination of “John Deere zero turn lawn tractor” only nets results for the platform type zero turns.

I just figured if I’m gonna do some custom work, why not look at all the possibilities?

Click to expand...

Half the problem with the front axels & bearings is that JD have gone to "tight turn" steering which puts an enormous strain on the drag links, wheel retainers & wheel bearings .
As you know it is only an E clip and while being heavier than a std E clip they are not designed to take heavy loads, particularly when the load is applied via a rolling bush.

So here’s what I came up with...

I knew attempting to thread the axle was going to be a pain, and even if I managed to get a die started and kept it square, the groove for the E ring was going to mess with the whole set up as it would eliminate 1-2 much needed threads. I would also need a low profile nut in order to fully seat it on the spindle and have room to provide a way of locking it (castle nut, some kind of pin, etc) which would provide even fewer threads.

So, as we all concluded, that wasn’t a practical solution.

What I decided to do was drill the spindle for a grade 8 bolt. I settled on a 3/8x16x1 as it was half the diameter of the spindle and I was confident it would be strong enough to hold the bearings.

I started with a 1/16” bit and worked my way up to 5/16” using 6 different bits. Technically I should’ve been able to step up by twice the diameter but since it’s hardened steel I was erring on the side of caution.

It was definitely a “slow and steady wins the race” job - I used plenty of cutting oil and ran my drill on low speed. I used a 3/4” deep well socket on the end of the spindle to mark the center with a punch as well as use as a reference for how straight the bit was.

To make sure I hit the right depth but didn’t drill too far, I set my veneer caliper to the shoulder of the bolt minus 1/16” to check the depth. I stopped 1/16” short to compensate for the thickness of the washer.

Tapping it was the same - plenty of patience and cutting oil. I’d cut about 1/4 turn at a time, back it in and out before cutting again, then after each full turn, remove the tap and clean everything with compressed air and apply more oil.



I took some measurements of the gap between the roller bearings when seated in the hub and settled on a brass bushing 3/4” ID x 2” long to make up the gap. It ended up requiring an additional 1/16” shim which I had on hand thanks to the roller bearing conversion kit I bought.

Here’s the setup without the wheel for clarification.



The 2 pieces on the end are salvaged from previous projects. The spacer is actually the inner race from a roller bearing that was used on an old lawn cart and the cup washer is from a valve cover on a Honda (don’t be deceived by that - the washer is actually very rigid, and if it doesn’t hold up over time, I can easily replace it with a grade 8 washer - I just liked the idea of it “capping” the spacer).



As you can see, it ends up just barely over the end of the spindle, and once the bolt is tightened, I think it’s ending up flush.

This secures the inner races while still allowing slight movement between the outer races. The wheel spins very freely by hand and the mower turns/handles well compared to how it was last year.

Of course, I still haven’t gotten to the actual hub caps...

But I think this was a good first step. I’ve mowed 3 times so far and checked the play/turning resistance every time - so far so good.

I’ll have to think about what I want to do for next winter, since I ran out of time.