It’s Always Something

Last week, my father-in-law asked if he could borrow my zero turn mower to cut the grass up north. Just a day before I had been out cutting my grass and told him it didn’t feel right the last few times I mowed. So he came over with a jack and we jacked it up.

As soon as I got underneath it, I could see what the problem was. One of the blades was completely bent.

The blade above is NOT the blade from my mower. The one from my mower was curved like a “C” or a “U.” It was bad! The other side of it had a nice chunk out of it too.

So I ran to the place I bought our mower and got a new set of blades. The guy at the store told me that since it’s been more than 3 years, it was probably a good idea to put three new ones on so the balance was right.

My father-in-law came over yesterday afternoon and we again jacked up the mower. Changing the blades is a fairly easy thing to do. The only thing holding them on is a bolt. We loosened the bolt, dropped the blade, put the bolt through the new blade and screwed it back on. The whole job took less than a half hour.

Once the blades were on, I started it up and drove out to the grass. I engaged the blades, and they seemed to work for like two seconds. I began to get a whiff of something that smelled like it was burning. I disengaged the blades and waited. I tried to engage them again and nothing. The blades weren’t turning.

Even know I knew it wasn’t the case, I began to wonder if we tightened the blades so much they wouldn’t turn. Impossible. We only tightened them by hand. I drove back to the driveway and we saw something in the grass. I walked over and picked it up. As soon as I showed my father-in-law, we both knew the belt broke.

It was shredded! It made perfect sense. The belt moves the pulleys that turn the blades. With that one blade bent like it was, the last couple mows I thought something felt “loose”. That belt had to be jumping up and down inside the pulley, which was just shredding the ends until finally, it broke.

So this week, the grass will have to grow until my father-in-law and I can drop the deck to fix the belt. He says it will be a job … it’s always something!