RFI: Removing Mower Blade from Lawn Tractor

[OlongJohnson]

I do suspension, brakes, wheels and tires myself. Have done valve adjustments both with screw adjusters and shims. Will be changing an engine very soon.

[Welder]

Just don't use the impact to tighten it. You can seriously f up the shaft doing it that way, and if it's the crankshaft of the engine, that will be even more expensive.

There's nothing wrong with using an appropriately sized impact to tighten blade bolts, shops do it all the time. I often use a 3/8" butterfly gun for this sort of thing; it's super fast and I'm not going to wring off a 1/2" bolt with it. If you've got a powerful gun, you should have a set of torque sticks for it so it's actually useful for tightening normal bolts, lug nuts, etc.

Biggest thing where an impact will get you in trouble is if you're using lubed or anti-seized fasteners where you shouldn't be, and lots of people do that not realizing that they should be reducing the torque substantially for lube, usually by half. Or if you're a dunce and you sit there hammering on something until you develop all 400 ft-lbs of torque that your advertised 700 ft-lb gun will make

[camel]

There's nothing wrong with using an appropriately sized impact to tighten blade bolts, shops do it all the time. I often use a 3/8" butterfly gun for this sort of thing; it's super fast and I'm not going to wring off a 1/2" bolt with it. If you've got a powerful gun, you should have a set of torque sticks for it so it's actually useful for tightening normal bolts, lug nuts, etc.

Biggest thing where an impact will get you in trouble is if you're using lubed or anti-seized fasteners where you shouldn't be, and lots of people do that not realizing that they should be reducing the torque substantially for lube, usually by half. Or if you're a dunce and you sit there hammering on something until you develop all 400 ft-lbs of torque that your advertised 700 ft-lb gun will make

I see dumbasses all the time using torque sticks inappropriately. Not saying you are but they are the vast majority of undertrained looking to make book time but have to redo the job. But I hear what your saying

[Borderland]

My neighbor and I just overhauled my mower deck. He has a lift in his shop so I use that when his shop isn't in use. Found out I had a bad bearing on one of the spindles. Damn thing was frozen on there and what normally takes an hour turned into about 6 hours. We ended up destroying a pully because a hydraulic jack was used to get the bearing off. I'm thinking now that replacing bearings every few years might not be a bad idea. The nice thing is they're cheap, shop time not so much.

My other neighbor is an auto mechanic but I haven't needed his services yet. He rehabs newer VW Beetles.

[rdtompki]

Just to further expand the excellent mower blade removal techniques herein a YT video showed a brave soul removing a riding mower blade by loading up the mower with tannerite and engaging said mower from what turned out to be an unsafe distance. Did not end well.

[Welder]

My other neighbor is an auto mechanic but I haven't needed his services yet. He rehabs newer VW Beetles.

He oughta be a pretty good mechanic then, bet he gets lots of practice!

[Welder]

I see dumbasses all the time using torque sticks inappropriately. Not saying you are but they are the vast majority of undertrained looking to make book time but have to redo the job. But I hear what your saying

Back in the early 2000's I spent a couple years working flat-rate, lots more crap going on in a flat-rate shop than torque stick problems LOL....

They're not a torque wrench but a good mechanic knows when they can be used. It sounds like you know this, but being off by a few ft-lbs only matters sometimes, mainly dependent on a fastener's function and additionally the type of material the threads are in. Otherwise a person would use a torque wrench on literally every bolt they touch. I've known people that were this anal, but professional auto mechanic-ing was not their forte.

Then on the other end of the spectrum I've got a 1" drive torque multiplier in the toolbox that's good for something like 3000 ft-lbs output, and it's one of the smaller ones out there. Thankfully I don't need it often, now there is an annoying tool to use...

[Borderland]

He oughta be a pretty good mechanic then, bet he gets lots of practice!

Yeah, he finds lots of dead ones. Evidently they're expensive to fix because VW. That encourages people to practically give them away. He says they're pretty easy to rebuild. He's rebuilt 6 that I'm aware of. He hauls them in and they're back on the road in a week. He has another full time job so just doing it as a hobby and beer money. Oddly enough his full time job is a communications tech for FAA. He says young women are attracted to them like magnets. Maybe those are just bait.