Mandrels

[Zenner]

I am replacing mandrels atleast once a year on my craftsman 917.270532 with cast aluminum 3 bolt 130794 mandrel. Yes, it`s old. Yes, I am plowing through stuff thats too heavy. Yes, I get the brand confused with caterpillar. I`m curious if anyone has found a more robust mandrel that has the right height, pulley arrangement etc. for that series of mower/mandrel? No problems adding more holes or making adapter plates just looking for suggestions.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Go to an engineering workshop with a mandrel complete with blade & pulley
Also a photo of it mounted into the deck and ask him yo make you one in steel pipe.
We had / have a company in South Australia that has been selling them on ebay for a while .
You could try looking on ebay.com.au but with freight rates it should be a lot cheaper to get them made locally
Just 2 pieces of pipe welded into each other to locate the bearings then a flange welded to the bigger one to mount it plus a few webs to support the flange and help locate on the deck.

Now the danger with this is if you are smacking into solid things like tree roots, fence pickets, rocks etc then once you replace the weakest link, something else will give way
So you will either bend the deck or the blades or both .
Down here we fit a swing back blade holder when we go to the steel mandrel like this
Just fitting the adapter & using swing backs has overcome the broken housing problems for some of my customers.
Cox used to export to Canada so you might be able to get the blades from there.
The USA banned swing back blades in the 80's for use on domestic mowers
You might even be able to get an adapter made to take the JD swing back finish mower blades used on tow behinds on real tractors.

 

[Zenner]

Thanks for the reply. Guess I was thinking more in terms of another model of mandrel i could purchase for replacement but i can do what you speak of at my work. We`ll see what happens.

 

[bertsmobile1]

In theory you could replace the mandrel with any other mandrel that is almost the same height deck to pulley.
Then it is a question of getting pulleys to fit of the right size ( or near enough ) as no two mower companies use stack pulleys on their engines that are the same diameter.
When you get to commercial mowers a lot of them use the same mandrels because there is not enough volume to justify designing & making a stand alone mandrel.

 

[StarTech]

Okay I going to bite since no else asked. Why are you replacing the spindle? Breakage, Bearing failure, or other problem?

Also there is a heavy duty version of the 532130794 long three point mount spindle available in aftermarket. I believe it is just a heavier housing only.

Most times all I see a failure is the sealed bearing not having viable grease left in them. I repack all new replacement bearings with moly grease before install.

 

[SeniorCitizen]

If the spacer is longer than the bearing outer race seat to seat distance, and every one i've checked is, when both bearings are pressed in until the outer races bottoms, the bearing won't last very long at all. Maybe a season, maybe days or maybe hours but sure failure is just around the corner.