Hi Tim62A, CyberJack, DeeJay and ODK members,
Firstly a warm welcome to this wonderful forum, I'm sure you'll have all your questions answered with the correct information.
Now firstly you say that the reel was sharpened around a year ago,
well I guess we need to know and this is not about laying blame, but more so to get an understanding of what has been done before we proceed with giving any advice.
1, was the whole job done by a lawn mower shop and was the bed knife replaced and sharpened at the same time, if so then I feel you just might have an adjustment issue which will be easily rectified as having two thicknesses of paper between the reel and bottom blade is not desirable.
The adjustment should be done in such a way that the reel is initially just touching the bottom blade and then backed off so that the reel just and I mean just clears the bed knife without touching it at all.
Now as far as the cotter pin is concerned and this really does concern me greatly as no captive cotter pin should be able to come out with the engine shaft still installed into the clutch half body.
Could you please be so kind as to post up some close up photos of the cotter pin area of the clutch so that we can assess it correctly and give you the right advice, but honestly I can at this point in time see that you are going to have to replace the clutch body with a new one that has the two set screws installed that pins the body to the shaft securely.
Anyway lets have a look at some photos first and we'll take it from there.
Cheers,
BB.
