Used tractor nightmare

[Demonseed]

Hello all, while I hate to meet new folks under stressful times, I'm certainly glad you've stopped in to hear just how bad of an experience buying a used tractor could be.

So I guess I begin with the machine which is a MTD Yard-Man Model 13AC762F755 DOM 4/2007 and I don't know if these next are relevant but their located just under the model so I'll include them too, 1602944.

So now that we all know "what" machine we're talking about, let's move right into the "why" we're talking about it.

As mentioned, this tractor was bought used. Supposedly in perfect operating condition. Well as I'm sure you've guessed by now, that wasn't exactly truthful.

When I went to pick it up from the guy, he was already outside with it and jumping it off. So ok, bad battery, not so bad. He gets it started with ease, turned over one time and fired right up, cool, so far so good. He then proceeded to demo it cutting capabilities, and right away it was obvious something wasn't quite right, and It was making noises it had no business making. And the blades weren't engaging correctly. He tinkered a bit but ultimately placed the blame on a spring that was damaged or missing. And like a fool I believed him, and didn't inspect it for my self. But honestly I don't know it would of done any good, because I wasn't familiar with the machine and wouldn't have caught the slew of problems it really had.

It wasn't untill I got it home, took it apart, then looked up it's breakdown manual that it became painfully clear that this deck was missing a lot of it's parts. Not only that but the parts that were on it didn't belong to it.

So thinking this was the extent of my troubles, I proceeded to examine the parts manual, and begin the painful experience of looking up and procuring every single part that bolted to the deck so I could rebuild it entirely with new OEM parts.

After jumping into all sorts of discontinued part number rabbit holes, and locating every piece I could identify from the exploded view of the deck, I then put it all together. That bit went fairly smoothly, and thinking I had this thing handled, I proceeded to remounting the deck to the machine.

Ok, I should of mentioned already, while researching all the parts I kept running into parts that were exclusively intended for a 46 inch deck, and what I have is a 38 inch. Now up to now I've been only referencing the deck portion of the parts manual thinking that covered all parts deck related.

So now I'm trying to reinstall the deck with all the bogus parts and deck mods reverted to their original manufacturer condition, and it's a fight. Like almost impossible, can't win kind of fight. And for the life of me I can't figure out what in the world is so wrong that the hangers absolutely will not reach all their intended mounting locations. Like, as far as I could tell by going over the manuals, and having only now ventured onto a new page, going over what I saw vs what the manual showed it appeared everything was in its place, present and accounted for except one oblong bracket that on the webpage I was referencing was identified as "unknown (discontinued)" with nothing more. And to further compound my confusion the exploded view is a multi model breakdown and so has parts shown that don't necessarily apply to everyone.

So after combing through all the parts several times, I finally noticed a detail that I've been over looking, and it was a sub-exploded view of all my lift hangers and hardware (meaning these were the parts I can see are actually on this machine) and they were circled with a footnote "46 inch deck hangers"

So once I got the world to quit spinning, I went back to the manual trying to understand how these could only be for a 46 inch when I clearly had a 38 inch machine and nothing so far as I could tell from the manual showed what was meant to hang the smaller decks. That is untill I noticed that one oblong bar shown again,. But there's only one shown so there isn't any way that could be a hanger bracket right?

Fast forward, I downloaded the parts pdf from MTD and printed it, then located the mystery bracket known up to now as part 41 "unknown (discontinued)" and then hopped over to the reference page and... Low and behold there it was, 41 Lift arm, Deck-RH. Followed up by a ghost part with no reference number for the exploded view, named, you guessed it, Lift arm, Deck-LH.

Neither of which were present on my machine, but also weren't shown with any sort of context by the manual, so as far as I knew they were actually an old and discontinued part no longer used but still referenced for the sake of historical purposes.

The hunt continued then for undisputable proof that I either did or didn't have parts intended for a bigger deck, and that's when I saw it, among all the other part names on the index page, (Deck lift lever [46 inch decks only]) so I jumped back to the exploded view and there it was right in front of me the entire time. Two completely different lifting levers that I could easily tell for sure now which I infact had. F-my life. It's the 46 lever.

So now I sit here, licking my wounds, pondering what kind of jacka** would hack up a machine so completely. Then I started to wonder if it's time to start counting my losses and throw in the towel, or dig-in and find out just how many more curveballs these pricks had left for me to discover.

I'm currently sitting somewhere around 500ish dollars with the machine and all parts purchased, with no clue how much a new complete 38 inch deck hanger system will cost, or even how involved it is to actually change all those parts.

I'm beat up. This damn thing has beat me down. I don't know enough about these things (but I'm quickly learning) to know what my best move from here is.

If any of you out there have an opinion on the matter, I sure would love to hear it. If y'all say that the worst is over and the remaining repairs aren't stupid to achieve, I guess I'll keep going, but I'm at a loss.

Everyone's welcome to point out exactly how many times I had to jump ship, before I crossed that point of no return.

I leave my future in you guys hands, don't let me down!

 

[sgkent]

but you got a good deal right? Maybe somewhere between the jump start and weird noises I would have hidden my wallet from him.. Given time, almost anything can be sorted out. Good luck.

 

[Demonseed]

but you got a good deal right?

Ha, well I suppose it all depends on how you would classify "good deal". Did I initially pay a lot, no. I gave him three of the four hundred he was first asking. But did I get it patched up for the cost of a spring? Again, no. After digging through all the purchases, turns out I was off quite a bit before saying I was only five hundred into this thing, the real number shocked even me once I added it all up. As of right now I'm closer to eight hundred than I'd like to admit. So, maybe it's just me being salty, but no, I do not think I got a good deal at all.

I'm not even counting the many countless hours I've lost trying to brute force problem solve my way through this mess. Three times now I thought I had it licked, and every time I walked away defeated, realizing each time the problems I just discovered were twice as involved and required twice as many parts as the time before it. Not even kidding, if I have that repeat just once more I'll have had to rebuild the entire machine from the frame up. /face-palm

Don't think I'll ever buy from facebook market again, that's for sure. Garbage platform doesn't even have a way that I can see to report the seller for making false claims, to warn any future unsuspecting would be buyer of the guys tendency of being less than truthful. I even tried contacting him again through the platform to reason with him to tell me what else I may encounter but not surprisingly I've yet to hear back. Shocker I know.

I'm just afraid all these new parts are going to add another two or three hundred to this nightmare. I could of bought one a hell of a lot newer and nicer then this POS for that kind of capitol had I known what I was getting myself into.

Sorry for being so talkative on the subject. This has been almost two months in the making and I haven't had a soul to talk to about it all. lol So what does one do in those situations but grab the first stranger that walks by and unload on the poor guy. Unfortunately you just happened to be him.

 

[StarTech]

I as a repair shop owner have seen a lot this DIYer stuff. Enough to drive me crazy at times. I know most of the costs involved in straightening out a F'd up machine but customer still go out and buy a cobble up machine and expect me to straighten it out for parts only. When those customers come in I just send them on to another shop that is will to do patch work.

 

[bertsmobile1]

There is nothing on a deck that can not be fabricated with a bit scrap steel a welder a file & a drill .
I make or repair deck hangers out of old blades all the time , mostly because they are stupid prices down here or the franchise holder is not importing that part any more .
New MTD stuff all use the Cub Cadet fast connect system , since around 2000 and the old ones are mostly plain flat straps pins & bushes
As yours is a 2007 model & has the Cub mounts
That model number should bring up the 38" deck as the F in the model is the 38" deck so it was originally 38" so should have the 38" parts on it unless some one tried to do an "upgrade " to 46" which since the original engine can not drive any deck over 42" would not go down well .
The only difference between the 46 & 38 hangers is the actual length of the arms, the 46 are longer because it is a 3 blade deck so is longer front to back
On the same tack, the drag link for the 46 is shorter .
So if your lift arm are too long then get ( or make ) a longer drag link and if they are too short then get a shorter front drag link
You can use a turnbuckle with a bolt through the deck mount if you want .
Did you buy this to use or to repair & flip ?
The part # 41 is the lift arm stabilizer and there are 2 of them one each side .
The are held into the lift arm , # 1 in the diagram by a pin

Now what we need to know is why does the deck not fit
Belt too short ?
Front drag link too short "
lift arms too short
The larger decks had smaller blades so they use a bigger engine pulley
A common ruse is to use the bigger pulley with the smaller deck to increase the blade speed in the incorrect belief that the faster blades will make the mower cut faster or throw further ( it does not )

Some photos would help a lot to visualize your dilema

 

[Demonseed]

There is nothing on a deck that can not be fabricated with a bit scrap steel a welder a file & a drill .
I make or repair deck hangers out of old blades all the time

Agreed, but I dont currently own a welder, so fabing my own parts isnt as easy as it could be. But regardless it would be like trying to find a switch in the pitch black dark in a room you've never been in before, because I have never seen the part that actually fits outside of the manual.

That model number should bring up the 38" deck as the F in the model is the 38" deck so it was originally 38" so should have the 38" parts on it unless some one tried to do an "upgrade " to 46" which since the original engine can not drive any deck over 42" would not go down well .

Correct, it is and always was a 38" deck on the machine. I can only guess at why they initially did what they did to this thing, but I'm fairly sure I understand the alterations now that I have the full picture of what they did.

When I first set out to fix the deck I thought I could get away with only changing the blades, blade spindles, and idler along with a new belt. So I proceeded to getting the right parts and replacing all of them. But once I had done that, I found I could no longer get the drive belt around all the pulleys. Which led to discovering the idler that was on it wasnt the right swingarm nor was the same diameter of the original. So I fixed the arm, and the belt became even more impossible to get around the pulleys. So I dug in deeper.

All the while, I had been seeing that they had also modified were the drag link mounted to the deck with a very poorly welded a chunk of flat metal extending forward, with a hole in the end that the link was connected to. So I incorrectly assumed that this must be why the belt would no longer fit. I then proceeded to cutting off the chunk of flat metal, locating the right drag link and trying again. Only now that I've done that, I'm finding the drag link is not long enough to reach it's frame mounting hole so each time I restore something I get even further away from my goal of hanging the deck and fitting the drive belt. So again, I dug in deeper, and finally I found the root of all my suffering, and that was all the hangers were also wrong.

So apparently everything I had "fixed" so far on the deck, was only ever tampered with in the first place because of them having changed the hanger system out for one off a 46" decked machine. I'm unraveling this mess exactly opposite of how I imagine they butchered it. Them chasing deck and belt fitment after the hangers were changed by removing parts then me seeing all the wrong parts restoring things, then hitting the same roadblocks they encountered with the belt and deck attachment. Only I didn't have the advantage of knowing why nothing was working, and seemingly getting worse with every part I put back to original.

The only difference between the 46 & 38 hangers is the actual length of the arms, the 46 are longer because it is a 3 blade deck so is longer front to back

This is what I've discovered. The arms installed are far to long.




Hopefully you can make out what's going on. But basically here I've dropped the lifting linkage from the carriage arms while the machine is lifted up so the deck would come forward enough to just barely get the drag link to thread on it's nut. But now that the link is connected, it will no longer go up and back enough to re-engage the lifting linkage.

On the same tack, the drag link for the 46 is shorter .
So if your lift arm are too long then get ( or make ) a longer drag link and if they are too short then get a shorter front drag link
You can use a turnbuckle with a bolt through the deck mount if you want .

That sort of thinking is exactly what led to this mess I'm dealing with right now. I'm intent on putting it back right, not shadetree hacking it together.



This is some of the garbage I've pulled off it already.

Did you buy this to use or to repair & flip ?

Bought it to use and hopefully for a very long time, after how much trouble it's turned into before I can ever see it cut it's first blade of grass.

The part # 41 is the lift arm stabilizer and there are 2 of them one each side .
The are held into the lift arm , # 1 in the diagram by a pin

Not saying you're wrong anything, but you're definitely not right either. You've clearly pulled up the manual and looked but take another look. I think you made the same oversight I did at first and looked at the lift assembly in the lower left of the diagram as though it was the only one shown. Which it is not. part #1 shown in that circled section of the diagram is only for the larger 46" deck. And infact part #41 is not a stabilizer at all, nor does it attach to part #1. It is infact the 38" deck equivalent of part #1 that is, as you mentioned, infact shorter than part #1

I've attached the parts page and it's corresponding lookup page.

Shown outside that circle, above and to the right, is were part #41 is illustrated with a C next to it indicating where the lift linkage rod (part #39) connects. Which you'll notice is not the same linkage rod illustrated inside the circle connecting to part #1. Although oddly enough the linkage shown to connect to #1 isn't even given a part number inside that circle. But it's clearly different from the one above #39 in shape so I assume is not the same rod.

But again, this page is very confusing to look at. This particular page of the manual does a very poor job of conveying that you're seeing more than one configuration for the lifting assembly.

There seem to be two linkage rods for the 46" decks that pull up on both the bars labeled #1, and only one for the smaller decks that connect to part #41, with the other lift arm (not shown in the illustration, but is referenced on the next page as "Deck lift arm-LH) I think is the stabilizer you mentioned.

Or there's the possibility I'm still misinterpreting this manual and nothing I said is right. IDK anymore.

Now what we need to know is why does the deck not fit
Belt too short ?
Front drag link too short "
lift arms too short

Pretty sure my previous answers covered all that.

Some photos would help a lot to visualize your dilemma

Done

 

[Demonseed]

Well I tracked down the other two lift bars and ordered them, and ordered new drive line belts because at this point what the hell right? Tacking another hundred onto my ever growing total. But fingers crossed I'm wrong about the lifting linkage being different between the various decks, and what I have will simply work once the new bars arrive. I so want this to be over already. All I wanted to do was cut my grass, and very much need to at this point because I've neglected it since I first got this thing and it's very much gone wild in the meantime.

So wish me luck.

Hopefully the next you'll hear from me is my declaration of victory over this nightmare, and not the other way around.

 

[Demonseed]

Oh I do have one more question for you guys before I take off and it's about the belts.

I noticed the original drive line belts rub against the decks lifting linkage and possibly other spots as well. Is that normal for these machines to have such tight tolerance for the belts that they rub other components or is that yet another symptom of something else I haven't discovered either being worn out or missing?

Can't lie I'm a little befuddled by just how many springs were used in the designing of these things. Those are certainly something I need to inventory and make sure there aren't any missing or wrong before I wrap this project up.

 

[bertsmobile1]

From the top.
1) the modifications done were done to raise the maximum deck cutting height.
Despite what is printed these mowers can barely get to 3.5" let alone the 4.5 they are supposed to cut.
2) in hind sight all that was really needed was a non standard sized belt
3) you have the lift arms fitted wrong and the connecting pins are in the wrong holes
The arms go to the inside of the U shaped bracket in the slot
The pins are also U shaped and spring loaded with the spring sitting where you currently have the arm fitted
The pins go in one of the 3 holes on the lift arm depending upon the deck so it overhangs the back of the deck
This effectively shortens the length of the lift arm
The extra holes are for different sized & styles of decks
Now if you intend to keep this mower you need to do another modification.
A the front, the plastic hood sits on the edge of the front frame rail
The plastic tab where the bolt goes through will break off , I am amazed that it had not done so already .
You need to make a brace bar to span the front frame rails and go far enough forward for the middle of the hood to sit on it so it take the weight of the hood .

 

[Demonseed]

From the top.
1) the modifications done were done to raise the maximum deck cutting height.
Despite what is printed these mowers can barely get to 3.5" let alone the 4.5 they are supposed to cut.

Somehow I feel like you're giving these guys far to much credit with their intent. But even if you're not wrong, stripping the deck of all its safety features ie.breaks, pulley guards etc certainly was not the right way to achieve that goal.

But honestly I fail to understand how longer arms could increase the cutting height, seems to me it would decrease it. But I'm not disagreeing, because I've already proven I fail to understand a lot.

2) in hindsight all that was really needed was a non standard sized belt

Maybe, but it sat under the tractor so cockeyed and crooked to start with, because of their jacked up methods of making alterations that I don't regret removing every trace of them having ever been there.

3) you have the lift arms fitted wrong and the connecting pins are in the wrong holes

Really? That's something I haven't even considered. I will absolutely be testing that theory at first light tomorrow. I'd be ecstatic if it will actually go back together.

The arms go to the inside of the U shaped bracket in the slot
The pins are also U shaped and spring loaded with the spring sitting where you currently have the arm fitted

I suspected that was the case but wasn't sure, I had the right side in its correct location to start off then, but I didn't have a carriage pin long enough to reach through that bracket with the added thickness of the arm on the outside of the box
.
So if I'm understanding you correctly, basically a smi-permanently attached quick release pull pin then yeah? But how would that apply to the left side as it doesnt have the same sort of C shaped bracketry as the right side does, nor does it show any signs of something being cut off. Is there only one quick release pin (pulled from the right side) that's long enough to catch both the hanger holes simultaneously?

I can't find anything like that in the illustrations, or any reference whatsoever to what belonged in that bracket.
Wouldn't by any chance have a picture so I could see it would you? Or even better a part number so I can get me one.

So if I move to a more forward hole, will I then be able to fit the correct sized belt on the pulleys or would that only land me closer but still in a place I'd need that longer belt you mentioned?

Now if you intend to keep this mower you need to do another modification.
At the front, the plastic hood sits on the edge of the front frame rail
The plastic tab where the bolt goes through will break off, I am amazed that it had not done so already .
You need to make a brace bar to span the front frame rails and go far enough forward for the middle of the hood to sit on it so it take the weight of the hood.

Good to know. I had already noticed exactly that, and thought it looked pretty spindly. So thanks for that heads up, I'll definitely take that tip and put it to good use.