Lawn adventures! (part 1)

A rogue Dodge Ram is spied in its natural environs.

The Embers Homestead is on 2.5 acres with some slope, a bunch of small trees, some complex landscaping, a pasture, and an ENORMOUS tree.  It's a catalpa tree that is literally roughly twice the size of our house.  It's beautiful but it sheds seed pods and flowers by the bushel.  About 1.5 acres are pasture that we won't be doing much to maintain (goats come later) but that leaves most of an acre that we'd like to maintain as a yard.  Because the house was a short sale, it sat vacant for several months.  In Washington, we have rich volcanic soil coupled with plenty of moisture and enough sun to keep most grass growing most of the year.  Because of this, the yard close to the house was well above my knee and the farther areas are chest level. To add to the fun, the former owner of the house gifted us a Craftsman riding mower and told us, "I had a friend give it a thorough tuneup and the deck is only a year old so it should serve you well."
Bull pucky.

Note the gas tank installed backwards...

Silly garden shack and grass to my nipples

Day one, the mower fires right up, drives down the driveway and back without a problem.  Day two takes a while to start up then it dies.  I start trying to troubleshoot and my brilliant wife yells, "Does it have gas in it?"  Nope.  Added a gallon of gas and it starts right up.  Get it out to the garden area, try to engage the blades and WHUMP.  Stops.  Can't fire it up and can't force it.  I put it in neutral and take it back to the garage where I start swearing and fidgeting.  I recharge the battery. No good.  I replace the spark plug and the gas.  No good.  Change the oil again, rebuild the starter, rebuild the carb, replace all the hoses and lines.  All to no avail. I get underneath it and the "new" deck comes to light.  The blades were seized in their mandrels so the secondary drive belt just drug across them getting hot.  When I tried to engage the blades it got VERY hot then stalled the motor.  The hot belt then baked onto the drive pulleys. YAY!  Time to refurbish this "new" deck.

When we got started the deck was more rust than metal, the blades were seized in their mandrels, and two belt retention clips were bent out of shape and not retaining a darn thing.  When I went to remove the mandrels the bolts simply shore off. Sweet!  I got the blades loose, scrubbed some stuff clean, re-attached the deck and ran the belt.  Used the mower and it worked!  Kinda.  Without the retention clips, when the belt disengaged, it would just fall off the pulley.  This led to one of two situations.  When I engaged the blades the belt would either sit loose on the deck doing nothing or would slide between the bent clips and the pulley which would slowly shred the belt.  The result was that I had to get off the mower and re-thread the belt every time I stopped and a belt that should last 2-3 years lasted two afternoons of mowing.

I gave up.  I took the deck to a mower repair shop and gave them 80 bucks (81.97 actually) and got it fixed.  I got it home, hooked it back up and MOWED THE DAMN LAWN!!!!

A yard that looks like a yard!  HOLY CRAP!