I have a Craftsman lawn tractor in the DTL 3000 series (model # 917.273811). Up until today, I could get the deck to engage by engaging the lever, lowering the deck completely, and riding around over bumps and rattling it until it decided to cut on. The difficulty of getting it to work has been getting successively worse and today, when I fired it up for the first time since last fall, I simply couldn't get it to come on. It's not that the belt needs to be replaced, because I tried that and it didn't help. What could be the issue?
I would bet that the pivot arm that the belt tension idler sits on is sticking. made need to look at see if the arm is moving freely or is stiff. If stiff, will need to be lubed and freed up.
If you look at the deck, there should be a cable with a spring on the end. That is the pivot arm for the tension idler pulley. It may be only moving part way, and not fully engaging the belt. some of the decks, the cable connect on top of the idler pulley with an extended bolt, other connect to the idler arm itself. I haven't looked up your model specifically so I am not sure which connection you have.
