OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Repairs and Maintenance Questions On Ride On Mowers Questions on Greenfield Ride On Mower Frames Greenfield 5XL

Going to need a bit (maybe a lot) of penetrene on this one, I had to cut the chain off with a grinder so I could move it, obviously been sitting outside for many years, at least the motor turns over and the oil looks clean

Ok so this one is moving along slowly but I have a question about how the deck pulley is attached. I seem to remember with the last one I did that the pulley was screwed on, does this sound about right?

G'day Norm,

You might be right there. I've not had a deck apart but will need to soon as the bearings are getting v noisy on the daily drive. I'll be very interested in what you find. I think I recall that the tractors are a LH thread - but of course that beastie chutes to the right and so is probably opposite?

Superdooper might know. Super, you out there?

Cheers,

Ok, just had a look at the IPC for the tractor. It shows no woodruff key or the like and the pulley is described as 'Pulley LH' which suggest it is indeed threaded and a LH thread on the left-shooting machines - yours being opposite, me thinks

That's going to be a bugger to remove

Thanks for that, I got it off without too much trouble, I had a feeling from memory that it was screwed and it is and was pretty tight,had to use a cold chisel on it to get it moving and once free it was easy to spin off and put the new bearings in. From memory the bearings in the Stallion were bigger, may not have been but I remember with that one I machined the housing out because the bearing was a bit loose and I then fitted 3 bearings in it to give it a bit more strength. I rebuilt an Anniversary model last year but I didn't have to replace the deck bearings because they had just been done. Thanks for the heads up on those being LH threads, I will note that

Yep, the HD8 and the 5XL are both right side throw models, so would use conventional RH threads on the cutter pulley.

IIRC those were the only RH throw Greenfield ride-on models. The IPL's for most of the later LH throw models don't mention the LH thread though...

I'm having a little problem with understanding how they were able to make blades spin in the opposite direction to make them a left throw, what am I not understanding here?

Take a look at a blade from the top. The right hand side has a cutting edge and the left side has a bend up to create suction. In an opposite rotation the right side has the bend and the left has the cutting edge. My Simplicity is the same.

Thanks Slash, but how do they reverse the rotation of the blade carrier?

The simplicity runs through a bevel gearbox and a pulley system. I don't know anything about g\
Greenfields. Do they run a twist in the belt?

Poo Slash I just dawned on me this very minute while I was thinking abut what you were saying about the twist. So [Censored] simple I feel stupid for asking, the left throw ones have a forward mounted motor, the right throw have a rear mounted motor. simple, simple ,simple

The front or rear mounted engine bit is not what gives the opposite throw. Either way it will throw to the right if 'directly' driven.

The left throw machines have a front mounted engine and the cutter belt runs aft, does a 180 degree turn behind the deck (this is the tensioner) and then on to the deck. I'm talking tractor models. Without the 180 degree turn they would also shoot right

Your stallion, rear engine of course, but the cutter belt must also run direct to deck without doing a 180 (?) and so had a different clutch/tensioner arrangement - and opposite throw

The HD8's had a horizontal shaft engine with the PTO pointing forward and a 'direct' line to the deck. The belts ran under the engine

Many ways to skin a cat

Yup. That'll do it too.

I went back to bed and thought about it and realized the motor position wouldn't make any difference. Looks like I'll have to get an anniversary model so I can get an idea how it works

Norm, what you have to look at is the idler pulley setups on the various cutter belts.

On the 5XL, the cutter belt will be nearly a straight run from the engine pulley to the cutter pulley. So the shafts run in the same direction.

The HD8 runs the cutter belt path through a 90� turn, around two idler pulleys, as the cutter spindle is perpendicular to the engine PTO shaft. The shafts run in the same direction, as with the 5XL.

The Tractor-X and later models have vertical shaft engines, so the cutter and engine PTO shafts are in the same plane.
But running a short direct belt drive wouldn't work at all well, for a few reasons.

So what Greenfield did, is to run the cutter belt path through a 180� turn, via two idler pulleys near the rear of the cutter deck.

This allows the cutter pulley to be moved vertically [as cutter deck height is adjusted] without severe misalignment between the belt and either pulley - which would cause excessive belt wear.

However, the 180� turn also 'reverses' the direction of belt travel at the cutter pulley, and hence the direction of cutter rotation. So Greenfield had to go to LH throw decks on these.

It's not that easy to visualise, so here's a diagram:


As depicted here, the engine pulley rotation is clockwise.

Thanks Gadge, I didn't get involved with the deck, pulley setup on the Anniversary one I had last year, this had all been replaced by the previous owner just before he gave up on it. The diagram is good and this will now allow me to sleep at night. I wonder how many sleepless nights old Mr Greenfield had staring at the ceiling trying to work out how to make it work. Same with the drive clutch wheels, always grabs my attention when I see the 2 wheels side by side on a single shaft with them turning in opposite directions. Thanks again that cleared that up

G'day Norm,
That design may not have caused Theo Reinhold [Greenfield's founder] too much lost sleep - I suspect he was one of those [now rare] folk who have an intuitive understanding of mechanical design principles. Used to be common, in the days when engineers had a lot of hands-on training.

Look at how little the basic Greenfield ride-on design has changed from the HD8...

The mark of a 'done right first time' design, IMHO.

Gadge there were all designed without the aid of computers, Australia had some brilliant design engineers in that era. You just to have to think about the designs developed here and then sold overseas. The list is amazing. The Greenfields are such a tough, basic machine designed to do exactly, cut grass.

This thing has some odd designed deck height adjuster that uses the deck wheels as the height adjustment at the rear. This then has the wheels in full contact with the ground and then when turning these wheels are forced sideways as in a bogey wheel setup. I'm not sure if this was the original design as the rear of the deck has been re-constructed (possibly because of the deck wheels being dragged across the ground ?). I'm going to see if I can do away with this idea and set it up so that the height adjuster lifts the whole deck up nice and square without the wheels being part of the adjusting system. Anybody have any thoughts?

G'day Norm,

That does look odd. When I first read your query above I instantly thought your problem was due to the excess weight of that rather beautiful looking deck repair causing the back end to drag. This coupled with the play in the height mechanism Greenies suffer from later in life.

But that height adjuster, if that's what we're seeing in your photos above, looks weird. Certainly not like the adjustment 'parallelogram' I'm used to seeing on Greenies.

I know not of the stallions but that doesn't strike me as the kind of thing Greenfield would have come up with. An IPC would be v handy at this point. I agree with you, it looks to me like the guy who fitted the Steel deck did this.

Are there any holes in the alloy part of the deck that suggest it was ever fitted with a more conventional setup?

Perhaps some more photos of this deck arrangement might help.

Cheers,