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So I'm replacing the drive belt on this murray and noticed the slop in the shaft coming out of the top of the transmission. I've never seen one wiggle like this before. This can't be anything close to normal or OK, right?

Appears the bearings on the input shaft are roached.

It's bad, are you gonna repair it or replace it?

The kit may be hard to find and/or very expensive, find the model numbers off of the tag on the side of the transmission and post them.

mower king said:

It's bad, are you gonna repair it or replace it?

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Customer says he got one on another mower. Will find out tomorrow. He's supposed to load it up and bring it to me. The whole mower. Yippy

PTmowerMech said:

Customer says he got one on another mower. Will find out tomorrow. He's supposed to load it up and bring it to me. The whole mower. Yippy

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Well....at least you'll have some other parts on the doner mower, in case you need something else!

mower king said:

Well....at least you'll have some other parts on the doner mower, in case you need something else!

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5 months into this new shop and I have 12 riders and about 6 push mowers for spare parts. No telling how many trimmers.

As the season slows, have a look at the riders, particularly the older rougher looking ones that look like they might be able to be made run reasonably reliably
The get them running and in season, when you get presented with a nightmare mower you can tell the customer it will probably x months as this is a big job & parts are hard to come by, I can offer you this rough running loan mower.
Thus you don't lose business taking 3 weeks to do a $ 500 repair.
Even better, nearly all of the used mowers I sell are sold this way because they find the rough mower is better than their mower.
Works really well for mowers that are missing hoods which no one ever wants to buy.
I sold 8 Victa super 24's ( 24" push mower ) in the first 2 years because the customer found that the 24" push was actually faster than their current 48" ride on + 21" Self propelled & string trimmer as it cuts 1/4" from walls and nothing stops them on 1/2 to 3/4 acre blocks.

Looks like Tar Baby mower service got another one in the shop. Many years ago i kinda had the mower junkyard thing going on. I don't have a lot of room so i was spending time stripping down mowers and cataloging parts. Then i realized how much non billable time i was spending to have used parts that i lose money on when i use them. So one day loaded up everything and scrapped it. There is an independent shop about 30 miles away that has a huge mower graveyard. Don't know the guy personally but folks looking for used parts i tell them where he is. Most time the mower they want the part for would be a tar baby anyway. Good luck PT with making a few dollars on that one.

Hammermechanicman said:

Looks like Tar Baby mower service got another one in the shop. Many years ago i kinda had the mower junkyard thing going on. I don't have a lot of room so i was spending time stripping down mowers and cataloging parts. Then i realized how much non billable time i was spending to have used parts that i lose money on when i use them. So one day loaded up everything and scrapped it. There is an independent shop about 30 miles away that has a huge mower graveyard. Don't know the guy personally but folks looking for used parts i tell them where he is. Most time the mower they want the part for would be a tar baby anyway. Good luck PT with making a few dollars on that one.

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If I get equipment in the shop that only has one fixable problem, I send out party invitations.

:The customer brought me the transmission, and I finally got it swapped out last night (about 9:30). Everything looked the same. Except now 1st is reverse. 2nd is neutral and the forward gears are from 3rd and up. There's an adjustment on the linkage. So maybe that will square things up after I make the adjustment.

bertsmobile1 said:

As the season slows, have a look at the riders, particularly the older rougher looking ones that look like they might be able to be made run reasonably reliably
The get them running and in season, when you get presented with a nightmare mower you can tell the customer it will probably x months as this is a big job & parts are hard to come by, I can offer you this rough running loan mower.
Thus you don't lose business taking 3 weeks to do a $ 500 repair.
Even better, nearly all of the used mowers I sell are sold this way because they find the rough mower is better than their mower.
Works really well for mowers that are missing hoods which no one ever wants to buy.
I sold 8 Victa super 24's ( 24" push mower ) in the first 2 years because the customer found that the 24" push was actually faster than their current 48" ride on + 21" Self propelled & string trimmer as it cuts 1/4" from walls and nothing stops them on 1/2 to 3/4 acre blocks.

Click to expand...

Do you ever run into a situation where when you loan out a mower, you never see the customer or the mower again, without them paying for anything?
You have all the money into fixing the loaner. Then you'd be out the money fixing the one the thief left you to fix.

I am not big enough to have loaners. Here is the best loaner story i ever heard. Woman name Elaine has me servicing her mowers. She has a bunch of small pine tree stumps in her yard. She pretty much destroys the mower deck hitting stumps. I tell her i can't fix it anymore and she needs to CUT DOWN THE DAMN STUMPS! She buys a new mower and proceeds to hit stumps the first time she uses it. Calls the dealer to complain????? Dealer brings her out a brand new mower as a loaner and she proceeds to destroy 2 spindles and bend the deck on the loaner. She felt kinda bad and called me to look at it to see what i could do for it. LOL . You can't fix stupid. She said the dealer pitched a fit when she called and said the loaner was broke.

Hammermechanicman said:

I am not big enough to have loaners. Here is the best loaner story i ever heard. Woman name Elaine has me servicing her mowers. She has a bunch of small pine tree stumps in her yard. She pretty much destroys the mower deck hitting stumps. I tell her i can't fix it anymore and she needs to CUT DOWN THE DAMN STUMPS! She buys a new mower and proceeds to hit stumps the first time she uses it. Calls the dealer to complain????? Dealer brings her out a brand new mower as a loaner and she proceeds to destroy 2 spindles and bend the deck on the loaner. She felt kinda bad and called me to look at it to see what i could do for it. LOL . You can't fix stupid. She said the dealer pitched a fit when she called and said the loaner was broke.

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I think it's about time to increase the labor rate on her.

Hammermechanicman said:

I am not big enough to have loaners. Here is the best loaner story i ever heard. Woman name Elaine has me servicing her mowers. She has a bunch of small pine tree stumps in her yard. She pretty much destroys the mower deck hitting stumps. I tell her i can't fix it anymore and she needs to CUT DOWN THE DAMN STUMPS! She buys a new mower and proceeds to hit stumps the first time she uses it. Calls the dealer to complain????? Dealer brings her out a brand new mower as a loaner and she proceeds to destroy 2 spindles and bend the deck on the loaner. She felt kinda bad and called me to look at it to see what i could do for it. LOL . You can't fix stupid. She said the dealer pitched a fit when she called and said the loaner was broke.

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As Bill Engvall would say, "here's your sign"

PTmowerMech said:

Do you ever run into a situation where when you loan out a mower, you never see the customer or the mower again, without them paying for anything?
You have all the money into fixing the loaner. Then you'd be out the money fixing the one the thief left you to fix.

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I like to trust people, it makes me feel good.
I have a small service footprint around 10 sq miles so some one will always know some one.
In 7 years I have been stiffed 3 times , leaves a bad taste in your mouth but I took out small debt claim on all of them.
One lost his house, his fathers house, his brother in laws house when the bank refused to roll over his interest only loan.
They were all on a 50 acre farm which the bank forclosed on because he could not get finance once the claim was on his record.
One was a gambler and ended up being run out of he village because he had bad debts everywhere.
The last is living with his mother in law because he can not get a home loan .

As for being out of pocket, the mowers I got because they were an uneconomic repair.
All that went into them was parts that I get wholesale so none would have owed me mare than $ 100 excluding time .
OTOH I have sold a lot of them because the person I loaned them to liked them .
Right now I am not particularly well so have 5 mowers out on loan
If I did not have them to loan out I would have lost around $ 3000 in easy work that I can do & be forced to do hand held repairs which right now I can not do.

And in most cases their mower is worth a lot more than my mower so if they don't return the loaner, I am ahead