New Ikon XD 52 - Horrible Front Wheel Noise?

[pkirby]

Hello all! I bought a new Ariens Ikon XD 52 recently. It cuts great, but makes this horrible metal-on-metal sound whenever I am moving. I had a Craftsman Z5200 before this and it never made this noise, so I'm having a hard time pinpointing it.

It does not sound like HST whine or deck rattle. It doesn't do it at idle, and it sounds as though it is coming from the front wheels. The sound sometimes stops if I am going in straight line for a while, but comes back as soon as I turn or the wheels flip around to go in reverse. It is loud enough to be easily heard over the engine even with the blades running. I recorded this video driving around a bit without the blades running:

Any suggestions on what to do? I am thinking about returning it to Lowes, but I checked out another of the same model that they had out and it also made the same noise. Is this normal? Anything I can do?

Thanks!

 

[sgkent]

talk to a local Ariens warranty station in general to see if they have encountered it before.

 

[pkirby]

talk to a local Ariens warranty station in general to see if they have encountered it before.

Service guy said it it may be improperly or insufficiently greased bushings, but would have to take it apart to find out and then go through the warranty process. Looks like it's easy to get the wheel off and check the bushing, so I'll probably do that and regrease it later this week.

 

[sgkent]

If it is something that simple, I wonder what other surprises await you at 30, 50, 80, 100 hours etc..

 

[pkirby]

If it is something that simple, I wonder what other surprises await you at 30, 50, 80, 100 hours etc..

Yeah... I'm concerned about that, too. The mower seems great aside from that, but I definitely wasn't expecting that kind of noise at all. It blew my mind when I went to another Lowes about an hour down the road and it had the exact same issue and noise. I have until December 19th to return it, so we'll see how it goes.

 

[pkirby]

Welp, I found two things today. Neither of the front wheels were greased at all; each one took a whole small cartridge of grease. Also, whoever at Ariens put it together stripped the zerk fitting in one of the wheels, so gotta replace that. It pulled right out when I went to detach the grease gun.