OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Repairs and Maintenance Questions on Walk Behind Lawn Mower Frames Two Stroke Lawn Mower Frames Unbolted a Victa Thumblatch Catcher.

I managed, after much struggle with rusted on bolts and nuts, to separate the two halves of this later type thumb latch catcher. I want to use the top half to attach to another. It has a crack on the back of the outlet part but is an easy fix and isn't structural.

The one I'm replacing has missing plastic on the upper corner where it goes onto the mower and let's clippings fly past, so this will fix it.

I am really just doing this just to try it out and see how worthwhile it is to swap upper and lower halves with the best two halves to make one good catcher.

The pan head bolts with pan shaped slotted screwdriver heads were very challenging to remove due to years of grime and rust. Even though I sprayed with WD 40 and left for several days they were tough to unfree. Only two out of the six came off without breaking the bolt. I used needle nose pliers and a carefully selected driver bit for the slotted heads that fitted snugly. Even so they slipped easily and I had to cut a deeper groove to get the screwdriver to grip in one case, and use a vice grip on another once I unscrewed it out enough to get a grip.
Very difficult. Now I have to do the same for the other catcher. The bottom half of this is going straight in the bin as it has a crack along the upper lip where it attaches to the top half.