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Have a 2 year old Exmark Radius with a 60” deck, been running low loft blades. Hit something while mowing, machine has a vibration it didn’t have before. Checked the blades, center blade had a good sized nick in it. Put my backup set of blades on it, vibration is still there. Seems to cut fine. Any idea what to check next? What if I continue to run it this way?

SHB said:

Have a 2 year old Exmark Radius with a 60” deck, been running low loft blades. Hit something while mowing, machine has a vibration it didn’t have before. Checked the blades, center blade had a good sized nick in it. Put my backup set of blades on it, vibration is still there. Seems to cut fine. Any idea what to check next? What if I continue to run it this way?

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A vibration usually means that something that turning a high rate of speed that's out of whack for some reason. <<<Thinking out loud.

I'd remove the deck belt, and feel the blades to see if they all turn true. Also wiggle to see what is loose.
Check the deck to see if there's any cracks around where the spindle mounts.
My guess is you may have broken a housing mounting bolt, or cracked the spindle housing.
There's a slim chance the deck is cracked.

PTmowerMech said:

A vibration usually means that something that turning a high rate of speed that's out of whack for some reason. <<<Thinking out loud.

I'd remove the deck belt, and feel the blades to see if they all turn true. Also wiggle to see what is loose.
Check the deck to see if there's any cracks around where the spindle mounts.
My guess is you may have broken a housing mounting bolt, or cracked the spindle housing.
There's a slim chance the deck is cracked.

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Jacked the mower up today, scraped away the crud, couldn’t find any signs of damage. Think I will run it for a couple of hours, then look again. Thanks for your thoughts!

If you hit something hard enough to stop the blade and cause the belt to slip it could have burnt a flat spot on the belt.

SHB said:

Jacked the mower up today, scraped away the crud, couldn’t find any signs of damage. Think I will run it for a couple of hours, then look again. Thanks for your thoughts!

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If the deck is cracked, you'll be able to spot it better from the top, if the top is clean (around the spindle assembly's)

I'm only guessing, but do you spindle housing mount from the bottom of the deck?

run it without the belts and see if the vibration goes away. Then add one belt at a time after inspecting it. Put the blades on your balance machine too, to see if they are in balance.

PTmowerMech said:

If the deck is cracked, you'll be able to spot it better from the top, if the top is clean (around the spindle assembly's)

I'm only guessing, but do you spindle housing mount from the bottom of the deck?

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It appears that the spindles mount via bolts from the top into bosses cast into the spindle housing. Top of deck is clean, appears to have reinforcing plates where the spindles bolt up, no sign of cracks.

sgkent said:

run it without the belts and see if the vibration goes away. Then add one belt at a time after inspecting it. Put the blades on your balance machine too, to see if they are in balance.

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Good idea on running W/O blades! I presume you meant on blade at a time to isolate where the problem is. I don’t have a balance machine per-se, just balance them on a screwdriver shaft, if they sit level and don’t try to turn I consider them good. However, the first step I took was putting my other set of blades on, problem persisted. Just got a new set the other day, can try those as well. Was focusing on the center spindle (since that is where I saw blade damage), running with a single blade should help isolate. Thanks for the suggestions!

hlw49 said:

If you hit something hard enough to stop the blade and cause the belt to slip it could have burnt a flat spot on the belt.

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Thanks - hadn’t thought about that! Will try putting my spare belt on if the vibration persists with no blades on the machine (see below).