Troubleshooting General Transmission RS800 odd issues in Ariens/Huskavarna lawn tractor.

[tehinternet]

While pulling a drag to ruff up some topsoil, the Ariens 936085 was straining. While it pushing it hard, I did smell some slight hints of burnt belt, but would stop, backup, and give it another try to power through the area that was holding it back.
Immediately during/after this three things have started happening:
1.) Full throttle and any speed over about 75% vibrates from the transmission. I'm thinking the secondary pulley. It vibrates pretty violently.
2.) Reverse is suddenly 2x the speed it used to be, which is surprising because quite often it's always been weak on reverse.
3.) Reverse sometimes doesn't work at all and takes a bunch of trying forward/reverse all over again until it starts working weakly, normal, or crazy fast.

I went through the entire checklist video here:

as well as a PDF version with slightly more info. All check pass on it.
(secondary pulley is the one with the black cap on top)
I went through the cleaning under the primary pulley:

I cleaned out any debris I could found hiding above the plate near where the break pedal is and just general making sure there's no junk caught up in there.

The belt with teeth connecting both seems in good shape. No missing teeth.

The only thing I see odd is that the secondary pulley looks like it wobbles. The axle/bar that it's mounted on seems centered at the bottom/top, but as it spins it seems like it's oval shaped. I don't know enough about these to know if that's normal or broken.

Any idea on my secondary pulley theory or what might result in a really bad sounding vibration when in drive at full speed and reverse is all over the place?

Thanks.

 

[Rivets]

Secondary pulley should not wobble, which indicates to me you may have a bad bearing or shaft. Extremely difficult to diagnose without being there. One thing I can tell you is, that unit is not designed to pull a load like a drag. Puts an extreme load on the tranny, causing premature death.

 

[tehinternet]

Thanks for the reply. Looking at it more, it seems like the bearing and shaft are fine, but the pulley assembly is all messed up. After taking the cover off of it, I can slide the top part back and forth -- this is the wobble I see when it spins. The opening that the shaft goes through isn't round any more on the bottom part of it, it's all ground up and rough. Furthermore, I can't push the aluminum cover down enough to get the pin out.

So, I'm assuming this is what I broke. I also found a comment from someone at General Transmissions on an Amazon review for this replacement part saying if it wobbles or is stuck in the open position (mine is) that it's problematic.

With the cause figured out, now I'm trying to figure out how to fix it. I can't get the damn thing off. It just doesn't want to seem to compress down enough and I think there's something like plastic bits or something in there preventing it.

I tried every angle with my hands. Tried gentle taps with a hammer. Tomorrow I'll try vice grips. If that doesn't work, I'll probably drill out the aluminum cover so I can slide the pin out and disassemble the thing.

http://services.generaltransmission...ormation/Service Manuals/39008-D1 RS800 P.pdf PAGE 11 for this secondary pulley.

 

[hlw49]

Not designed to pull stuff. Like I said junk.

 

[tehinternet]

Updating this in case this helps anyone else with the same problem. After rough work the mower no longer had much power going forward, and in reverse it randomly didn't go backwards, would go back slow, or would go back in hyperspeed faster than I've ever seen it move backwards.

It was the secondary pully that got broken/damaged. Luckily the rod it's on was undamaged, as well was the lower half of the pulley. So I just had to replace the upper portion of it. The original one has some plastic (WTF cheap ) that the metal rod goes through which melted away/broke when I was beating up the lawn tractor pulling a drag. After that the pully was a little off and wobbly. The replacement parts from General Transmission were exactly the same and worked great.

Challenges were: I had cut off some of the aluminum upper part of the pulley with a dremel in order to slide the pin out as it was too damaged to remove normally. Getting the broken parts off the rod required unbolting the mechanism that raises and lowers the mower deck from the frame to get the clearance to remove the parts. Doing that required knowledge of how to disconnect the mower deck. Also, it takes some knowledge on how to remove some of the pulley around the primary pully. The job took about 2 hours for a weekend warrior.