Hi Thursty,
As TC suggested there's absolutely no need to replace the Reel as it will probably have plenty of life left in it. Once you've put some close up photos up of this machine we can better assess it's over all condition.
Now as far as engines are concerned I would strongly suggest to anyone that has a twin railer with an original Briggs on it to hoik it off and drop it in the nearest scrap bin and replace it with the superior 550 engine.
I along with many others within the industry strongly feel that if you want to preserve the rails in these feebley designed chassis' then the vibration that is produced from these new 550's is nearly non existent and thus will have the chassis last easily for another 50 years.
You can actually have one of these 550 series powerplants sitting totally unmounted and run it and it'll just sit there and run without much movement opposed to the earlier style Briggs units that would simply jump around and smash their casing to bits. Now to think how much of this energy is passed onto the chassis frame is really unthinkable. I've crossed over to using these new generation engines on all my own machines and if anyone brings a mower to me for service work I will try to sway them over to using this newer style.
and at around the $250 You'd never look back !
Cheers,
BB.
