hey guys this is Eric owner of Farpoint farms and since once again it looks like spring has come right in the middle of winter I figured that was a good opportunity for me to get the mowers out tractors out and do some just work on them so today we're going to be doing something that you're likely to come across on your riding mower or your yard tractor or your garden tractor and that is a symptom you're mowing your lawn and you notice that you have one blade that seems to be cutting a lot lower than the other or perhaps your blade is hitting this deck that's caused by a failing spindle a lot of times what happens these spindles which sit here your pulley sits on top of this these tabs will break and that allows the spindle to and now your blade is cutting at an angle if not cutting straight across so this is actually a very common problem and a very simple fix we're going to go through fixing it today because I need to replace one on this motor right here the first thing you want to do is to clean out the area around your mowing deck you want to get all the grass and dust and debris and stuff out of there if you know there was summertime I'd probably get the garden hose out and wash all this off but it's winter so I'm going to use a blower and I expect I'm going to use my little electric blower let me grab that real quick okay this is just a Ryobi 18 bulb electric blower perfect for job great little tool I'll pity I'll do a review on this someday anyway the reason you want to do that is you want a nice clean surface so you can work on you're going to have to find some nuts bulbs chances are there's going to be some rust involved we want to make sure everything's nice and clean so now we've taken care of that the next thing we're going to want to do is jack up the front of the mower so let me go grab a jack and I will do just all right now we're jacking this baby up make sure that you're not jacking onto the muffler or someplace important you want to make sure you get onto the frame this one has a nice actual frame that goes across the front here I'm going to raise it up by that you don't have access to a jack you can do this without it it does make job play a bit ease so I do recommend it if you get your hands on well you got this up in the air it's a good idea to go ahead and lubricate all your pivot points and make sure your belts are in good condition but like I said today we're focusing on replacing a spindle so the next step if your mower has it if you've got these covers plastic covers to protect the spindles you're going to have to remove those this one is a Torx bit might be a Phillips head or it may not have it at all my craftsman whitey 3000 over there it didn't come with them it's just exposed so you can skip to the next step but right now let me grab some tools and I'll go ahead and start taking this off people okay got my Torx t20 here like I said this could be a Phillips could be a bolt pattern or could be gone altogether but the end result is we've got to get this off and don't be surprised it's in the process of removing these bolts break if they do it's acceptable to run the tractor without these covers lines okay so I've got the three bolts that are off and now we've exposed the spindle I'll grab some underneath and see how badly broken we're talking about ad-free that looks like one's completely broken off and the other ones aren't far behind so the next step we're going to have here is to remove the belt and you just kind of snake that off from around it then we'll just set that off to the side we don't want to lose that so the next thing we have to do is we got to get this nut here off and that's a bit tricky but you're going to have to do is put your hand underneath here you're going to have to grasp the blade get a rag or even maybe use a piece of 2x4 to prop against it in order to break that loose I believe it's seven eighths but I'll go grab that let's find it okay so got seven eight bolts on top now like I said a rag especially if your blades a shot find your grab points and then you're going to be breaking this thing loose okay all right and then just continue to work it off until it starts to loosen up here like so that's probably the hardest part of the job and you get to remove the pulley itself okay make sure you remember which way that goes way down there now this may see pretty bad so next this will be twelve thirteen to fourteen and there should be three bolts holding this thing up once that happens this whole spindle will drop right out of the bottom we'll go inside to the workbench separate the blade from the spindle and we're ready to reinstall it with our new setup spindles are available on Amazon or Ebay and they shouldn't run you more than twenty dollars or so and that's for a nice new one got a new bottom piece on there not for the top well that was 20 bucks with shipping on Amazon I think and I already pre filled some of these our greasable this this one's not this is a sealed unit so one more time I got to go get a tool and then like I said we'll have this thing on the ground got the tool go ahead and remove these bolts you need leverage you might have to use a pry bar thing to rust these thing goes with this top piece now if you have access to a impact gun by all means you can use that and that certainly will speed up the process I'm trying to show how you can do this without those tools and it certainly is possible if you don't have a breaker bar or an extension you can always use Lane I am okay see that one broke off but that's okay because we're not refusing this it breaks off when you're going back together that's the problem yeah broke off too welcome to the Rust Belt this piece you want to hang on to you remember that that goes there well it's out as you can see not just one but two of them were broken off so that was kind of dangerous if that broke completely off you could have a you could have a pretty serious problem that blade come flying out of there and we don't want that so wow she's rough do you want to hang on to all these pieces because this controls the height of the spindle and we don't want that to get messed up so I'm going to set that aside I got a Nestle's finally and broke the third one off too so we were ten out of ten that's the last piece that it was a still attached some models may have a bracket underneath make sure you reinstall it if it does some will come with this some will not okay so that's just something to be aware of you know this one does obviously okay so in order to take this off we want to make sure we keep that fact we'll put that on top of this Oh what do you know this one came with a new one so we don't need that for this model but sometimes they do sometimes they don't it didn't come with the nuttin and washer make sure to add that and just set that aside okay so the next thing to do is just to separate the blade and this blades pretty rough so I'm going to sharpen it while I have it off but I believe that is a fifteen or sixteen so once again yes okay so same process if you're on pavement and concrete or you want to put this on our workbench it's a lot easier but fourteen millimeter now I'm going to hold it together and there we go and then you just unscrew it and - it's all the way off I'll pay attention to which side went towards the spindle and which side won away from the spindle so again if your new spindle doesn't come with these nuts you'll have to hang onto this stuff okay so that's it we're done with this and some plugs got plenty of use out of it so we're ready to top that and that and that and that Matt the by God we're ready to start reassembling so we've got a new spindle here and reinstall the appliance in the direction that it came off put that on there remember the washer you could also retighten it on the bottom of this tall x it'll be on the top you'll get it tight for now and then just like before you more you notice like that up finish it up we're holding it here below you don't want this coming loose either so make sure it's nice and snug okay right now we have three self-tapping bolts here and take those out again this one has the cover you want to make sure that gets reinstalled okay we'll slide that in like so and then we're going to come up on meat here and just get all the started you don't have to look and have to type them all the way down right yet I'm hoping you go out and see well doing it I don't have a consistent here today so it's a little hard to get this done and then we'll go ahead and tighten them all up okay so I've gotten all three bolts fairly snug on us made my final adjustments make sure my little place here and the location is supposed to be not go ahead and up and tighten them down okay now it's nice and snug so where are we now well we're almost done got your spindle make sure you remember which direction it went in then reinstall your blind in the direction that it came off remember the washer was on the bottom of this one sometimes it'll be on the top and then just like before we're going to tighten it up it will hold it in gear below take okay just tighten that down myself and we're ready to put the belt back on make sure it hasn't fallen off anywhere else simple enough okay and because I actually didn't break the cover coming apart oh yeah I'm going to go ahead and reinstall it and add a little bit of safety okay fight them all down the rest of the way so that's it finish tightening up your bolt we'll drop this thing back on the ground and then we're ready to go and of course it is the middle of winter it doesn't look like it but it is so we won't be mowing anytime soon but now I'm I'm one out I'm ready for spring ready to start my own again this is a really common failure and you can take it to a repair place probably charge you 100 to 150 dollars to do what you and I just did and about a lot 20 minutes 30 minutes to lives you know t25 torx for this half inch seven eight and a fourteen underneath you know may be a little different for your mower depending on the make and model but they're all quite similar your basic homeowners tool set you should be able to do this of course if you have air gun you can knock this out in about ten minutes but that's it while you have the blade offs good idea to go ahead and sharpen them that's another video I'll take the blades off here and we'll sharpen it in the spring most likely so I'm Eric or a Farpoint farms and I hope you enjoyed this video hope you get some useful information out of it and if you did you can thank me by subscribing and letting me know what else you'd like to see me take care of on mowers and the spring will be doing oil changes to knobs that kind of stuff as well as routine maintenance tire changes and some of the tips and tricks you can do to your mower to give it a little more power and get to last as long as it should so that's it take care