OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Restoring, Customising and Modifying Ride-On Mowers Rover Colt Gearboxes Service It NOW

Hi i have a few Rover Colts and 2 of them are starting to pop out of gear. So today i undid the chain, 4 bolts and then removed the pulley and put it on the bench. Take c clip off the shaft and remove cogg. Leave the opposit end c clip on till you split the box. 6 bolts 2 are down low in recess don't miss them. As soon as you split the box u will see why it is starting to pop out of gear. The grease is solid and not anywhere where it is needed. There is a big circular gear (see pictures ) in the middle of that gear you will see two raised blocks and the drive face instead of being nice and square is rounded off on the drive side. The drive piece slips over this rounded off block and then catches again causing the machine to jerk or pop in and out of gear.

If your box is ok i would make time and service it now. Fingers crossed the machine shop can square the faces again.

Before its too late.

Should be easy enough to clamp it down on the mill bed and run an edge cutter along the faces to square them up. Good luck. They will probably charge you a fortune though.

Will let you know aussietrev.

The grease in the left side of the case shown in the picture came out with a screwdriver all in one solid piece lol. The design of this gearbox is the same as the Cox two disks and a cone. Had a buggy once with two straight cut gears mounted in the open that we used to smear grease on the gears in the morning and smash through the gears all day and they never showed a sign of wear. A local guy here has done it to his ride on because of the price of a new box and hard to get second hand.

There are no seals on the shafts just brass bushes. Another local guy here serviced his box and put a mixture of grease and 90 oil in the box and it only gets a slight weap out the bottom shaft. Its also super quiet now and very easy to select forward or reverse.

I have 5 colts, 2 pop out of gear and 2 spare boxes that pop out of gear as well lol.
Another project lol

You can also use OO grease which is designed for this purpose, it is a self leveling grease, was used in a lot of old motorcycle gearboxes

Another Falcon, seems they are starting to pop up more often. Picked up one cheap at a farm auction, got it running and gave the motor a coat of paint and it sold at another auction for $100. Didn't have the guards on the belt, drive chain or chute and the seat was missing a big chunk but some guy was happy to get it.
They are a terrible machine design wise, no reverse and you cannot push them to put them away, you have to lift the front wheel off the ground because even at full slack there is still too much bind on the belt, and the amount of pressure you have to apply to the drive pedal would make anything other than a small lawn a nightmare.

I mucked with the drive belt length and now its sweet. Found some info on it and it was missing a spring which helps with drive engagement and one of the linkages had two holes and it was in the wrong one. Mine pushes out of the shed and along the lawn no worries. The tennis club i bought it from said the secret to helping push it and get the old scooter brake to work properly was high tyre pressure in the front wheel. Amazing the phone number for the company still works and found out a lot more info about who built them. I can mow right into a corner and still manage to turn out without any problems. I have over the years always adjusted garden beds etc to make it easy to mow, no whipping. I mow the front yard with it and it always manages to stop traffic lol.

Will get back with the machining results.

$50 for both gears machined and all back together with the correct grease. Apparently the original grease was overkill and when the gears spun through the grease it would leave a groove through the grease never to lubricate the gears again. Confirmed this by using the original grease recommended in one box and the latest grease in another box i have. The latest grease had no groove in it but the old recommended grease did from new.

This is a 'Foote Model 35' gearbox, and the issue with old grease has been documented - here's a good rundown; https://www.gilsonsnowblowers.com/snowbulletins/gsbs_01.pdf

It's not that the original grease used was 'overkill'; it was Shell Darina '0', a bentonite clay thickened, NLGI #0 grade, Extreme Pressure semi-fluid grease, as per the chart below. It has just 'gone off' over time, and lost its flow properties.


I would tend to follow NormK's advice, and use an 'NLGI 00' grade grease, which is a bit more 'runny'.

For example, Penrite 'semi-fluid grease' is an NLGI 00 grade EP grease, which is available in 450g cartridges. Most of the other manufacturers' 0 and 00 grade greases are only available in 2.5kg and up pack sizes.

Good rework of those gears, BTW. They have been unavailable new for a few years now.