scag-wheel-motor-control-arm_01

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 22:12:43 -0600

With the lawn doing so well, I have, not surprisingly, become obsessed with the quality of the cut from the mower which, has been moderately lousy for some time. The obsession has had me out in Shed 2 working on it for the last three or four days.

What you see in the photo is one end of the right "wheel motor control arm." The closeup is of the sealed bearing/pivot because of all the corrosion and NOW I know why the arms have become much stiffer in movement..duh.

But the reason I pulled this one off was because the threaded rod was seized meaning I couldn't adjust the wheel speed in neutral and it's this adjustment that is needed in order for the mower to track straight ahead.

There is one of these attached to the bottom of each arm and the other end controls the wheel motor on the respective side. The independent wheel movement is how you get the term "zero turn." The damn things are tucked inside the frame and it's a real PITA to get a couple wrenches on the nuts and bolts at each end. Probably took me forty-five minutes or longer just to get the right one off.

And now that I've seen the corrosion, I'm gonna have to remove the left one and repeat the cleaning process. DAMMIT but at least THEN I'll be able to tweak the tracking to my satisfaction. The next mower task after that will be to finally level the cutting deck and hopefully improve the cut..fingers crossed.