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48" deck and arbors


Simpleton7016

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Simpleton7016
I picked up this 48 inch deck last month as a spare. This may be the one that I may experiment and try to put double gator blades on. But I see that the previous owner did some custom work. See below. First is the "before" picture of the deck in "as is" condition.

It has been so cold for the last month or so that the deck has just sat in the garage and I never really looked it over. But today it was nearly 50 degrees out, so I pulled out my pressure washer and blasted it! Between you and me, I told my wife that I was going to fire up the pressure washer to clean the garage and wash the cars, but my real reason was to wash the tractor and my new toys. Anyway, here is my pressure washer. A friend of mine works at Generac and built this thing out of spare parts. He sold it to me for cheap....VERY cheap. And believe me, the pressure washer is the best investment I have ever made! I use it for everything and recommend it to anyone!

So after a nice bath, the deck looked like this:

Upon further inspection, I see that the left and right arbors are not original. I have not taken it apart yet to examine further, but is this a fairly custom "fix"? I can not tell what the leaft and right came off of, but there are spacers to drop them down further. Is this safe? I would hate to spin off a blade in the direction of my kis (ok if towards my neighbors dog thoguh! hehehe) Am I better of replacing these with the correct ones for safety reasons? Just seems like an odd fix to me, but then again, maybe that's what he had laying around. Otherwise, they spin freely and are otherwise mechanically sound.

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These are the replacement kit arbors. I'm not a fan of them either, but that's what you get.... Don't have the instructions and kit # anymore. But should be safe at least as Simplicity's engineering dept. believes. Not had a problem with them but haven't used the deck that much since replacing them.
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Hold on to them aluminum spacers they bring good money on ebay or at least they have in the past. They are safe to use, I would be more concerned about putting double gator blades on.
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I had a 48 with those spacers in it also, I never ended up using it So i sold it.. I like the arbors like the center myself...
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I've done a number of older decks using the spacers and newer style arbor assemblies. I've got into the habit though of replacing all three rather than just one or two. My humble opinion is that the mowers do not mow 100% level mix and matched with older and newer arbor assemblies. Seems to me that the new ones do not sit at exactly the same level as the older ones. The grass always seems to be a slightly different heighth over the oddball arbor. Could be the beginnings of senilty or insanity, but thas my opinion..
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If the measurement from the deck to the blade is different on the shimmed arbor then the grass height will undoubtably match the variation. So theres prolly nothing wrong with ur noodle Sam.
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