Mower Transmission Repair

We've had our Cub Cadet LT1045 riding mower for 3 years now and its run well.

This year we've had to breakdowns... first it wouldn't start.

Now, the transmission drive belt shredded. This one will take alittle more to fix.

First, we dropped the mowing deck out from under the mower.

This was really easy to do, and it was great having the extra hands from the kids to help.

Yeah, kid's hands and mowing decks don't go together well, but in this case it was OK!

Lots of yuck under the mowing deck.

It is a good time to clean it out and sharpen up the blades while we have it off, too.

Fortunately, there is alot of information and diagrams for the mowers online.

We ordered a new belt for $35, and got it after two days.

Here is the underside of the mower - with the transmission's pulleys visible.

The only big issue with putting on a new belt, is taking both pulleys off of the engine's drive shaft. Slipping the belt up and in on the pulleys was tricky, but not difficult.

Ok, here is a cool trick we'd only heard of but never tried. Because the bolt holding the pulleys was on the motor's drive shaft, loosening or tightening it was impossible - the motors shaft simply spun as we tugged on the socket.

So, we took out the spark plug, and stuffed the chamber full of nylon rope. Now, as we pulled on the socket, the rope bound up the piston, freezing the drive shaft, so we could EASILY loosen and tighten the bolt!

Seeing this trick work so well made the whole repair worth it! It is really cool seeing something like this work so well. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had a chance to get that bolt off.

Here you can see the PTO's clutch dropped off, and the upper pully down to slide on the new belt.

Putting it on and all back together took less than 5 minutes.

We did a cleanup on the blades, and a quick sharpening, too.

The repair took about 40 minutes. The blade work another 15.

Not a bad repair, after all.

The mower is back, ready for action. Much to the chagrin of the mowers...

The repair shop said they were backlogged by 4 weeks. Glad we could get it up and running so quickly (and cheaply!).