followup time:

On May 6, 3:36 pm, dpb wrote:
On May 6, 2:03 pm, "Larry and a Cat named Dub" wrote:
Nothing wrong with jerry rigging when the factory stuff is crap.

Previous thread on the subject really didn't establish that the
problem is at all related to an under-designed factory part

not sure now, I would have agreed with you before, but.......

-- it
appeared from what Tater posted before he ran through a bunch of heavy
brush and destroyed the fan that way before.

that was the first prognosis. now after chewing thru another one,
rebuilding the worn pulley, making a metal fan blade out of a
7"x2"x1/8" piece of strap, bent to act crudely like a prop. and having
limited sucess, I think the overpriced cheap plastic fan blade has a
design flaw or two.

This time he's indicated
the pulley was worn to a very poor state and replaced it w/ something
else -- it's pretty likely that repair didn't solve all the problems
existing. That the tractor is 20+ years old probably has some bearing
on the problems...

oh agreed! my rant was no more than 10 minutes from the desctruction
of $37 worth of non-useable plastic with no other option in sight
except to build my own replacement.

"limited success" means that i got it to work, replaced all the other
parts someone else jury rigged on the mower, got to mow for about 2
hours before the transmission overheated. got my 1.4 acres mowed in
less than a day and alsmost ran thru a tank of gas before something
else became a problem

the new problem
maybe when i replaced all the belts, i got some of the guides wrong,
or maybe my jury rigged pulley aint perfect, or maybe my rigged fan is
rubbing on the belt(real doubtfull). but i wore out a belt yesterday.
not real worried, only $6, and i'll do some checking to see what was
causing the problem. everything looked great, so I am guessing it is
just a tiny adjustment i fouled up. please no comments, i think i got
it figgured out