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Have anyone experienced frame cracks/breaks on a Fastrak 20/52? I mow approximately 1+ acre or rolling sloping lawn. My mower has the rear two bag grass collector with the side mount blower. The unit was purchased on 11/11/05 and other than having to rebuild a Hydro Motor right after the warranty expired it has been an excellent mower. While reversing the tires (original) due to wear I noticed the frame broken in several areas around the Hydro Motor drive mounting area. Apparently Excel knows about this and has made reinforcing gusset(s) that must be welded into place. I'm not at all thrilled at having to remove the drive systems, both gas tanks and a bunch of other stuff then buffing the area down to bare metal, repaint, reinstall etc etc. My dealer is a good group of guys but their 50 miles from me and while this is an Excel failing they have contacted Excel/Hustler on my behalf. The frame has a LIFETIME warranty from Hustler so what can I realistically expect from Excel. I have a quality welder but I don't consider myself a quality welder and I want the repairs to be of superior quality so does Excel pay for a certified mobile welder to come out and do the job? Personally, looking at the huge access cutouts the "engineers" designed into this area, I think the drive motor mounting area was seriously compromised in its design. In the best of all worlds, Excel would pony up to their warranty clause and instead of making a weld on bandaid fix, send me out a new frame...even if I have to spend a couple of days/weeks swapping all the components. Give me your thoughts please.


View attachment Aligned for welding.jpg.zip
View attachment Broken Frame.jpg.zip

Any dealer I have ever worked for, any warranty work has to be done in their shop by their employees. Just never seen a dealer just give you the parts and say here go fix your own equipment unless maybe you are a qualified factory authorized repair shop. But who knows things change since I worked for a dealer.

Take it back to the dealer that is what they are for.
The instant you touch it your warantee becomes void

Any chance you can post some photos of the Cracks?

Thanks,

DJH said:

Have anyone experienced frame cracks/breaks on a Fastrak 20/52? I mow approximately 1+ acre or rolling sloping lawn. My mower has the rear two bag grass collector with the side mount blower. The unit was purchased on 11/11/05 and other than having to rebuild a Hydro Motor right after the warranty expired it has been an excellent mower. While reversing the tires (original) due to wear I noticed the frame broken in several areas around the Hydro Motor drive mounting area. Apparently Excel knows about this and has made reinforcing gusset(s) that must be welded into place. I'm not at all thrilled at having to remove the drive systems, both gas tanks and a bunch of other stuff then buffing the area down to bare metal, repaint, reinstall etc etc. My dealer is a good group of guys but their 50 miles from me and while this is an Excel failing they have contacted Excel/Hustler on my behalf. The frame has a LIFETIME warranty from Hustler so what can I realistically expect from Excel. I have a quality welder but I don't consider myself a quality welder and I want the repairs to be of superior quality so does Excel pay for a certified mobile welder to come out and do the job? Personally, looking at the huge access cutouts the "engineers" designed into this area, I think the drive motor mounting area was seriously compromised in its design. In the best of all worlds, Excel would pony up to their warranty clause and instead of making a weld on bandaid fix, send me out a new frame...even if I have to spend a couple of days/weeks swapping all the components. Give me your thoughts please.


View attachment 28652
View attachment 28653

Click to expand...

Viruses in the pictures he sent.

DJH said:

Have anyone experienced frame cracks/breaks on a Fastrak 20/52? I mow approximately 1+ acre or rolling sloping lawn. My mower has the rear two bag grass collector with the side mount blower. The unit was purchased on 11/11/05 and other than having to rebuild a Hydro Motor right after the warranty expired it has been an excellent mower. While reversing the tires (original) due to wear I noticed the frame broken in several areas around the Hydro Motor drive mounting area. Apparently Excel knows about this and has made reinforcing gusset(s) that must be welded into place. I'm not at all thrilled at having to remove the drive systems, both gas tanks and a bunch of other stuff then buffing the area down to bare metal, repaint, reinstall etc etc. My dealer is a good group of guys but their 50 miles from me and while this is an Excel failing they have contacted Excel/Hustler on my behalf. The frame has a LIFETIME warranty from Hustler so what can I realistically expect from Excel. I have a quality welder but I don't consider myself a quality welder and I want the repairs to be of superior quality so does Excel pay for a certified mobile welder to come out and do the job? Personally, looking at the huge access cutouts the "engineers" designed into this area, I think the drive motor mounting area was seriously compromised in its design. In the best of all worlds, Excel would pony up to their warranty clause and instead of making a weld on bandaid fix, send me out a new frame...even if I have to spend a couple of days/weeks swapping all the components. Give me your thoughts please.


View attachment 28652
View attachment 28653

Click to expand...

I'm trying to figure out how to upload two pictures. First is how I found it and the 2nd is aligned ready for welding. My very distant dealer is arranging for two of the gussets to be send to me and I will arrange a certified welder to weld in place. The dealer agreed to submit a warranty claim to Excel/Hustler on my behalf. Sounds like a plan but I wish the fix was a little more robust.


Broken Frame.jpgAligned for welding.jpg

Clearly I have not figured this out. (Sorry, I just migrated from a PC to a MacBookPro)

What's the secret to imbedding a pix into the body of the message?

On this server you have to upload them to a web site like photobucket then use the url to post the pictures.

BlazNT said:

Viruses in the pictures he sent.

Click to expand...

No that is the EVIL EMPIRE ( micro sloth ) deliberately making life difficult for Mac users.
Happen all the time.
Some one in Gates family tree obviously used to burn witches so it has become a family tradition.

Yes they do not look good.
It will require welding the cracks, then grinding the weld flush then welding some heavy angle iron across the weld line.
part was cut out of the sheet in the wrong orientation to the grain direction.
easy mistake to make really hard for QC to pick up.
Please ask for written instructions for your welder ( email will be fine ) and keep it to show it was done with the Hustlers OK ( through the dealer ) just in case you need further work because if one side was cut wrong, the other might be wrong as well.

bertsmobile1 said:

part was cut out of the sheet in the wrong orientation to the grain direction.

.

Click to expand...

So you are saying the metal has a grain direction? They are working with steel not wood.

reynoldston said:

So you are saying the metal has a grain direction? They are working with steel not wood.

Click to expand...

Yes all metal are crystaline and have grain structures and getting the grain to go the way you want it to to maximise the strangth so you can reduce section thickness is part of the art & science of good engineering design.

The sheet that part was cut out of was rolled across the photo so it has long grains across the screen.
The frame has weight pulling strait down so it is stressed in the up down direction.
During use the frame gets vibrated in and out, left & right, both at right angles to the grain and the triaxial stresses cause the cracking.
If it was cut with the grains going top to bottom it would not have cracked as readily and required a nothing more than some small flanges to guard against the left right stresses.

This is with respect to the photo

And yes steel grain work similar to wood grain, which is why metallurgists used the term grain in the first place as we had been working with wood for centuries so understood wood grain.
Thus when we saw similaraties in the behavious of metals we grabbed a term that we were all familiar with to descride it.

Yes wood has a grain because a tree grow up and in nature the tree can stand up to the wind. When they pour steel its in a liquid form. Didn't know that a liquid had a grain like wood? So you are saying when they roll out the steel it gets a grain in it? I guess its something I never heard of and you looking at the picture can see this? Is there anybody else out there that can see the grain in the steel because I sure can't. So you are also saying Hustler's engineers don't know what they are doing so the whole machine is made like this? Sorry I just don't buy into it.

Yes all metal are crystaline and have grain structures and getting the grain to go the way you want it to to maximise the strangth so you can reduce section thickness is part of the art & science of good engineering design. ( you are very good with words)

reynoldston said:

Yes wood has a grain because a tree grow up and in nature the tree can stand up to the wind. When they pour steel its in a liquid form. Didn't know that a liquid had a grain like wood? So you are saying when they roll out the steel it gets a grain in it? I guess its something I never heard of and you looking at the picture can see this? Is there anybody else out there that can see the grain in the steel because I sure can't. So you are also saying Hustler's engineers don't know what they are doing so the whole machine is made like this? Sorry I just don't buy into it.

Yes all metal are crystaline and have grain structures and getting the grain to go the way you want it to to maximise the strangth so you can reduce section thickness is part of the art & science of good engineering design. ( you are very good with words)

Click to expand...

And very correct. I watched a "How its Made" or show like it once and learned why they role some metals and cast others. It was very releveling.

In most cases you can not see the grains with the naked eye they are way too fine.
What you can see is the direction of travel and the shape of the crack.
Knowing how steel cracks allows you to make deductions from the appearence onf the crack which will flow along between the grains.
The shape also tells me it was a ductile fracture due to vibrations.
The shape of the frame it self and the position of the engine & mounting bolts + a little knoweledge gaind since taking over the repair run fills in the rest of the story.
There is also a better than average chance that is was made using cheap imported steel with too many impurities laying between the grains which form facture paths.

In a different life as a brand new freshly minted metallurgist I spent nearly a full year cutting lumps of ingots mounting them in Lucite, polishing them till they were brighter than mirror finish, etching them so as to reveral the grains structure then counting the size & number of grains on all 3 axies. Then I graduated to extrusion billets . The the company bought a machine that would do about 50% of the process and 40 technicians ( including me ) got the shove .
With plain black bar rod & plate which is most of what is used there is a specified grain size range and it is pretty broad.
Cold rolling is very expensive but hot rolling is relatively cheap so a lot of imported steel has not benn cold rolled sufficiiantly enough to give it the required strength.
You will notice that come times a lump of plain steel will seem really soft and that is because it has a coarse grain size ( amongst other things )
As you get into engineering grade metals the grain size becomes really important and will usuallay be specified by the customer.

I don't think they cut it wrong as both sides are symmetrically cut. IMHO they removed too much material to make assembly easy and of course to fit the Hydro Motor design. The rest of the machine is built like a tank-it just seems to be this one area is weak. When I get the repair gussets from Excel/Hustler I will take a pix of them for comments. I'm hopeful the gussets will reinforce the area sufficient to eliminate this ever happening again. My plan is to remove both fuel tanks, the engine, the drive motors and the mower deck so the frame can be tilted up on its side. Nearly all welders, certified or not, do a heck of a lot better job welding flat areas versus vertical areas.

If they removed too much metal then there would be necking at the fracture face where the crosssections area was insufficant to carry the load which there is not.
If the corners were cut square then you would have stress raisers but they have been cut nice & round.
It is fairly heavy plate so it can take a bit of a load.
And just because one was cut wrong does not mean all of them were cut wrong.
Come cheaper nesting programmes will happily orient parts the wrong way in order to cut the greatest amount of product from each sheet.
Scrap = lost profits.