Well here is the result of all my hard work so far, it’s not finished yet but definitely getting there. I can’t believe the difference in this mower, this thing has gone from a curb side piece of crap to a pretty nice mower that I plan to keep around for a few years. I know I am certainly happy with it so far, time to mow the lawn.

I finally got the frame painted in the same paint I used on the deck. I had a buddy help me sand the frame while he was over hanging about which really helped speed up the process. After the frame was painted and finished drying I decided to get some new power wires ran for the motor and ignition system. I added a new ground and cleaned up the old wiring to keep things neat and easy to work on.

While refinishing the deck (covered in a previous post) I noticed the mandrels where ruined at the blade attachment. The star shaped key was rounded off beyond repair so I had no choice but to replace the mandrel completely which I had no problem with. These are the parts that hold on your blades and keep them away from you, I would hate for one to break loose and who knows what kind of damage it could cause. Another nice benefit of the new mandrels is brand new bearing which will keep the blades spinning with minimal resistance. I received another misc. goodies package from Sears in the mail and I bought a package of E-Clip retainers to replace all of the old rusted / missing clips. I bought the new clips at Harbor Freight for a fraction of the price sears wanted.

Lots of work to do here. This was literally hours upon hours of sanding and even then I was still cutting corners by not reducing the grit of sandpaper in the proper steps. In the end I was still very satisfied and getting the rust off of the main frame was my biggest challenge.

I plan to convert all of the pictures I took of the old lettering and logos into vector art to later be cut out in vinyl. I have a couple friends with vinyl cutters and each of them owe me favors so some new stickers will be the way to go. I haven’t decided if I will replace all of the stickers or just some of them, I also don’t know if the new vinyl will stick to the new textured style paint. I’m in no hurry to get this done so when the time comes I will find out, until then I am left with a blank black dash and my memory.

After my last post it was obvious the deck needed some serious work so I decided I would tackle that first. I have to say I was very happy at the way the deck turned out. I ended up using a truck bed coating spray paint on the top and liked the look and durability of it so much that I decided to do the entire frame in this paint. It is expensive and blasts out of the can rather quickly which makes it even more expensive but its well worth it IMO. Check out the pictures below and tell me what you think.

I decided to pull the Mower out on a nice day and get the years of dirt and grime off of it so I could start prepping it for paint and maintenance. I noticed while cleaning that the deck was rusted out severely and would take some serious sanding and painting to get it back in shape. I decided I would sand the deck thoroughly and throw a ton of paint on it to help prevent additional rusting in the future. I also noticed the 2 “leveling” wheels where broken off and the holes where oval’d out which would take some welding and repair work.

I got some new much needed parts, the old air filter, spark plugs and fuel filter looked like they were original. I decided to spend a few extra bucks on the better Gator Mulching blades and picked up some new belts to resolve the slipping issue while in high gears.