07/10/2025
Another John Deere, another bent spindle mounting surface. This time on a 3yr old S120.
Customer hit a tree stump, then said the blades were hitting and there was a stripe on the lawn.
You can see just how much the discharge side spindle pulley is bent.
Penetrating oil and heat has to be used on the spindle bolts to prevent them from snapping (they seize due to dissimilar metal corrosion steel-aluminum) as you have to replace the entire spindle if you break a bolt.
This means money saved on parts, but increased labour cost.
On spindles that are already cracked, we just take the impact to them and snap the bolts off since we're replacing the spindles anyway > time saved but money spent on parts.
Paint has to be removed to inspect the metal for cracks, no welding was needed on this one.
Using a straight edge, a flat metal shaping hammer and a crescent wrench I was able to get the mounting surface flat again.
When I get the blade tips lined up to within a 1/16" I call it quits, because you could spend forever making small adjustments.
The metal is so thin on these mower decks that once you tighten down the 4 spindle bolts, sometimes it's enough to slightly warp the mounting surface, and you're back to removing and adjusting again.
Unfortunately they don't make a spindle reinforcement plate for the S120 yet.
Once everything was reassembled, the tires were pressurized, and the deck was leveled on concrete to the blade edges.
