# Helpful repair



## Mickey (Aug 14, 2010)

Over the last few days I've spent some time doing maintenance on my mower deck. Noted the rear rollers were getting a little worn as is to be expected after 10 yrs of use. Thought I needed to do something. My deck has adj front wheels and adj full width rollers in the back. With wheels adj to mid-position, the rollers had to be all the way down to get the deck leveled.

Checked on-line prices for replacement rollers, $17/ea and there are 7 of them. Being the cheap guy I am, prices seemed a little too steep for me.

Gave the problem a little thought and decided I could repair for a lot less IF I didn't consider my time as valuable, that's another discussion.

Why not "recap" the rollers? The std rollers are somewhat over 3" in dia. Being worn badly, I'm not sure what the stock OD is. I did some checking and 3" DWS ABS pipe is 3.5" OD and just a shade over 3" ID. My rollers are slightly under 3" dia.

Bought a 10' length of pipe for $14. That will make 3+ sets of rollers since rollers are 4" in length. Next issue was how to attach the "caps"? Stk rollers are made from Polyethylene plastic and you're not going to get anything to stick to it very well. After some thought I decided to use Polyurethane adhesive. Sticks to almost anything plus the OD of the stock rollers are very rough from the wear. The foaming of the glue will create a tight fit with the roughness of the old roller OD.

Cleaned the OD of the old roller, roughed up the ID of the DWS pipe. Since the ID, OD of the 2 pieces are not exactly the same, I wrapped a few turns of tape around the old roller until the 2 fit fairly close. Since Polyurethane needs moisture to cure, I wiped the inside of the new piece, applied a bead of "glue" on to the outside of the old roller and slid the 2 pieces together. In about 30 min I could see the glue foaming up and bleeding out between the gaps. In a hr or so, the glue was set up enough so I could handle the roller but glue was still very tacky. Set the roller out in the sun and in a couple more hrs, glue was set up enough I could trim the excess glue that had flowed outside the roller. Using a razor blade, cleaned up the overflow of glue. Took a few measurements using a pair of calipers. OD of roller is within .010" of being centered on ID. Good enough for me.

One down, 6 more to go.

Maybe this repair could be used as _food for thought_ if you have a sim problem with wear and want to attempt to make repairs Vs spending the $$$ for a new set of rollers.


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## wjjones (May 28, 2010)

That is a good idea, and I will be trying this on my mower for sure as the deck wheels/ rollers on it are $15 each x 5.


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## Mickey (Aug 14, 2010)

If the post gave anyone an idea for their mower deck(s) my intent was served.

Finished the job yesterday. Not the easiest job as the the adjmt mechanism for adj roller height has to come partially apart to enable the 5 inner rollers to be removed from shaft. Needless to say shaft was pretty cruddy from 10 yrs use. Roll pins used to position rollers. These weren't the easiest to remove and most were worn to the point from side loading they had to be replaced.

Anyway, looks good now and hope the repair lasts for a few yrs. I'm getting to the age getting the deck removed is becoming a real chore. The deck tips the scales at >250#, pretty heavy for a 48" deck. The heat didn't make the job any easier.


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## wjjones (May 28, 2010)

The last full width roller I had to work on was bent upwards right in the center I had to remove the rod, and straighten it back out.


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