What is the strategy? I replaced the cable and the pin seems to slip out of the grooves when I put just a small amount of tension on the smartdrive, causing it to fully rotate around (black clipped in piece is rotating even without the smartdrive grey section on, can rotate it all the way around just gripping with fingers and it barely puts any tension on the drive, wheels will turn lifting up the mower but not enough tension can be forced by rotating the grip before it clicks and the pin presumably dislodges from the grooves until rotated back around).
Ok, I worked it out after pulling apart and assembling it at least 5 times.
1. Doing it without the cable connected to the gearbox is significantly easier to check if it was done right.
2. Can push and pull the cable and twist the grip while the gearbox end is out the mower to properly check operation (ensure holding and cable doesn't allow easy 360 rotation of the hand grip where it partially clicks into place on some positions, this means the pin is at an angle still).
3. It would appear the multiple failed attempts the pin went at a slight angle and that was enough for it to engage only lightly in the top or bottom half, it had to be perfectly straight and then it goes properly into both halves.
This is really only easily done with the tension fully released from the cable (the first few failed attempts I tried to shorten the cable to release as much tension as possible and got my partner to hold the gearbox to further release the tension but it likely wasn't enough, I didn't try the "wedge long screwdriver in place and hold it on that position by putting the mower weight down on it" method, maybe that would have worked as that may have stretched the belt sufficiently to give enough movement on the cable top end to ensure the pin would seat properly on top and bottom half grooves.
I had initially thought that in my effort to initially pull apart the 2 halves that I had distorted the shape or stretched the 3 clips a little, and this was enough for the pin to slip out, was contemplating cutting a slightly longer pin to get around this, but realised I was not getting any kind of tension required to push the box against the belt for any mower movement, and a longer pin would have likely not yielded much improvement. It was only when I realised that the pin could easily sit at an angle and easily give the symptoms observed that I made an extra effort to pull the cable out a bit so the pin could be oriented and ensure 100% it would seat in both halves that I finally had success.
