OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Repairs and Maintenance Questions On Ride On Mowers Questions on Greenfield Ride On Mower Frames Greenfield Anniversary model

I went up to Ballarat yesterday to do some work on a mates Anniversary model ride on.. He rang me to say it was revving its guts out, this was a Millers Falls Chonda motor I fitted a number of hears ago. He had been replacing the steering tie rod ends and had removed the governor arm bolt. Easy 5 min fix because I thought the governor had failed and I was going to have to modify that or fit a motorbike carby to it. All doable but not easy when not in your shed. Then it turned to belts slipping and I saw it had an "A" section belt on the cutter belt. No problems we will drive 30 ks into Ballarat and get a belt. All good but my question is and I can't remember how I have done this before, is how to release the ratchet on the drive belt adjuster. I couldn't get it to release so I ended up cutting a section out of the bodywork with a grinder so I could get a lever in there to pull the flap that locks the ratchet so we could get it to release. Any other ideas?

My next question is why does it need this ratchet device? Most other rideons rely on springs to keep the belts tensioned, so I am thinking of removing the ratchet locking plate and rely on the spring that is already there. That is if I can get in there to get at it without having to cut anymore bodywork away Greenies are a good little mower but they have many design issues that make maintenance difficult. If they had fitted captive nuts in all the hard to get to places it would have made life so much easier for maintenance to be done. My mate said yesterday for an Australian designed and built product they make the old English stuff look good.

Nobody has any suggestions? I have another Anniversary here and I can get the adjuster shaft to sort of come back with wriggling and moving it about but I still can't get it all the way back out. Very bad bit of design work

Hi Norm,

I wouldn't remove the ratchet ,, as we know other mowers have the belt tension-er on the slack side of the belt depending on the rotating direction of the pulleys but with the Greenfield having forward and reverse on the same drive belt, if you remove the ratchet the belt will slip .

If it did not have the ratchet the pulley would be pulled backward, loosening the belt, whenever the mower was driving forward.

To release the ratchet on the drive belt adjuster ,the first thing to do is remove the tensioner spring on one end then release the
flap that locks the ratchet.

I've never worked on one of these ride on mowers but going by the images it looks straight forward ,I mostly worked on MTD ,Ariens
and Deutscher .

It's a lot easier with images to see what's what when I don't have this model to look at. I know the seat will need to be removed to get to the
ratchet and tensioner.

.
If the ratchet shaft or any slides have rusted and are sticking ,I have put paper towel on rusted parts then brushed on
white vinegar onto the paper towel and make sure the towel remains damp for a week or 2 and this will remove the rust,just wire brush
parts after you take the paper off and clean with a rag and lubricate parts with oil or grease.

The wet towel will stick to most parts and on any angles.

Cheers
Max.

Thanks Max,
Good point about the reason for the ratchet, I hadn't thought about the forward/ reverse tension. Problem with it is the one in the pic is similar but different and there is no way of getting to the leaf spring. The drawing shows the spring attatched to the tension spring but the ones I'm working the spring is just connected to the body with no way of getting to the leaf spring. Thanks for the tips it gives me some ideas to work with

Hi Norm,


The images I have show a hole in the top of the bracket for the belt adjuster pulley that you put a screw driver through
the hole to lever back the leaf spring so once the seat and top plate are removed to gain access to the pulley bracket if
there isn't a hole I would drill one in the bracket allowing you to lever back the leaf spring.

Cheers
Max.

Hi Max,
maybe there is a hole in there but as you can't remove that part of the bodywork because the fools building these things didn't use captive nuts anywhere so without taking a grinder to the bodywork so you can get access to the nuts there is nothing you can do apart from what we ended up doing, cutting a section out so we could get a lever under the front of the leaf spring but it takes 2 people to do it. The other one I have here is different again so I can't cut a hole in the side because the deck adjuster is completely different and goes right across that section of bodywork.

G'day Norm,

Yep manufacturers can make repairing their products a lot more difficult than it needs to be, like you say they
should have used captive nuts ,nutserts are an easy fix but would take some time to remove the old bolts by cutting or drilling.

Cheers
Max.

Hmm, sorry I missed this Norm. You could have brought it over to my shed. I seem to remember, on some model greenfields , the release is accessible from underneath. You de-tension the whole assembly to release the belt. Bit late now!

Hi Ironbark,
The belt released itself when the cutter belt threw off and got tangled up. Had to get the ratchet released to get the belt back on. I will have to come up with some way of releasing it in the future. At least at the moment we know how to release it even though it is a 2 man job