Great job and I appreciate your willingness to show your mistakes. Nobody lives long enough to make all of the possible mistakes, so we should all try to learn from the mistakes of others.
This series is one of the best and most detailed on the K46, and the engineering/assembly is awesome as well. Thank you for making it! If there is ever a reason for you pull the trans again, creating a "how to pull trans" from the mower video would really useful. There aren't any good videos out there on how to safely remove the trans for a rebuild. While the trans is used in lots of mowers and brands, the hookup points are likely very similar.
Great stuff! I recently bought a used Craftsman Pro 8400 with this trans in it. It has only 50 hours on it, so ill be performing your drain plug mods and doing an oil/filter change on it soon. Thanks for the great work!!
Awesome! Would love to hear how it works out. So far only one person has reported back after trying it and it failed because he drilled out the vent hole at an angle by accident and couldn’t get a good seal. Best of luck with your build!
A lot depends upon how many times you mow in a year but most importantly if you're towing stuff or mowing on hilly terrain. Obviously anything that causes an extra load on the transmission will cause the oil to breakdown quicker.
I think it's possible that when you reassembled this mod, way back when, that the fan was above the disk that holds the belt. This could be backwards, only according to other videos I've been watching related to the K46 transaxle. Others have made this mistake too and comment that they are surprised there is no consequences when assembling it the wrong way. I wouldn't be surprised if this is what chewed up those wires, the fan being higher than originally intended. Maybe I'm way off though, just thought I'd share. Thanks for making your videos so detailed!!!
It’s a good callout. On my particular machine the fan goes on top of the pulley. I’ve seen others that have it in the reverse with the pulley on top like you describe. I’m pretty sure I just routed the wires either around the belt or too close to it. Brutal! Thanks for the comment and for checking out the video!
Neat mods. Did you ever find the wear points for those aluminum shavings? Possibly from the refurbished pump housing? I'm about to send mine off for repair.
I didn’t see anything obvious in regard to wear points. It did cross my mind that I could have reversed the washers on either side of the small gear, causing it to rub on the case differently. Or I may have missed some particles when cleaning the case and that caused the wear. You really need to do a good job cleaning out the case. This last round of taking the trans apart, I ended up flushing the whole thing with fresh oil (in addition to using a ton of cleaner) because I took it apart multiple times due to breaking the bypass pin. When I got my parts back from being rebuilt, they looked very clean. When I saw the new wear this time around, I considered sending the parts out again but didn’t want to have to wait to get them back. I just risked it and very carefully sanded the center case faces with something like 3k grit paper. I don’t know what else the rebuild guy does with the parts. I think he also does something with the little pistons because they came back with a marker line on the face of each one. Good luck with the rebuild. If you come across anything interesting please feel free to share 😀
I have read comments on forums and JD refused to allow access for the user to service these trans and instead seal them up so we have this issue by the millions of tractors out there. So yes they planned obsolescence into their designs.
I was taught by a old timer . If you add 1 oz of stp per qt of oil to rearend manual transmission. It works by finding friction points to aid in stopping wear. Just fyi. And it works.
haha, this looks like a "time saver" I've done before...have to take it all apart anyway. Its too bad they didn't design it with a plug and filter access to begin with...planned failure by the mover manufactures...just want it to last till the warranty is up. gotta pull it to clean the filter...kind of pisses me off
Great job and I appreciate your willingness to show your mistakes. Nobody lives long enough to make all of the possible mistakes, so we should all try to learn from the mistakes of others.
This series is one of the best and most detailed on the K46, and the engineering/assembly is awesome as well. Thank you for making it!
If there is ever a reason for you pull the trans again, creating a "how to pull trans" from the mower video would really useful. There aren't any good videos out there on how to safely remove the trans for a rebuild. While the trans is used in lots of mowers and brands, the hookup points are likely very similar.
Thanks! Great suggestion on a trans removal video. I’ll def keep that in mind.
Great stuff! I recently bought a used Craftsman Pro 8400 with this trans in it. It has only 50 hours on it, so ill be performing your drain plug mods and doing an oil/filter change on it soon. Thanks for the great work!!
Awesome! Would love to hear how it works out. So far only one person has reported back after trying it and it failed because he drilled out the vent hole at an angle by accident and couldn’t get a good seal. Best of luck with your build!
Very cool! 👍
A lot depends upon how many times you mow in a year but most importantly if you're towing stuff or mowing on hilly terrain. Obviously anything that causes an extra load on the transmission will cause the oil to breakdown quicker.
One year but how many hours?
Gave me flashbacks of my own tinkering messes
Any good stories? 😀
I think it's possible that when you reassembled this mod, way back when, that the fan was above the disk that holds the belt. This could be backwards, only according to other videos I've been watching related to the K46 transaxle. Others have made this mistake too and comment that they are surprised there is no consequences when assembling it the wrong way. I wouldn't be surprised if this is what chewed up those wires, the fan being higher than originally intended. Maybe I'm way off though, just thought I'd share. Thanks for making your videos so detailed!!!
It’s a good callout. On my particular machine the fan goes on top of the pulley. I’ve seen others that have it in the reverse with the pulley on top like you describe.
I’m pretty sure I just routed the wires either around the belt or too close to it. Brutal! Thanks for the comment and for checking out the video!
Neat mods. Did you ever find the wear points for those aluminum shavings? Possibly from the refurbished pump housing? I'm about to send mine off for repair.
I didn’t see anything obvious in regard to wear points. It did cross my mind that I could have reversed the washers on either side of the small gear, causing it to rub on the case differently. Or I may have missed some particles when cleaning the case and that caused the wear. You really need to do a good job cleaning out the case. This last round of taking the trans apart, I ended up flushing the whole thing with fresh oil (in addition to using a ton of cleaner) because I took it apart multiple times due to breaking the bypass pin.
When I got my parts back from being rebuilt, they looked very clean. When I saw the new wear this time around, I considered sending the parts out again but didn’t want to have to wait to get them back. I just risked it and very carefully sanded the center case faces with something like 3k grit paper. I don’t know what else the rebuild guy does with the parts. I think he also does something with the little pistons because they came back with a marker line on the face of each one.
Good luck with the rebuild. If you come across anything interesting please feel free to share 😀
How many hours did you do in that one year, thanks
Probably about 15-20 hours
I have read comments on forums and JD refused to allow access for the user to service these trans and instead seal them up so we have this issue by the millions of tractors out there.
So yes they planned obsolescence into their designs.
I was taught by a old timer . If you add 1 oz of stp per qt of oil to rearend manual transmission. It works by finding friction points to aid in stopping wear. Just fyi. And it works.
haha, this looks like a "time saver" I've done before...have to take it all apart anyway. Its too bad they didn't design it with a plug and filter access to begin with...planned failure by the mover manufactures...just want it to last till the warranty is up. gotta pull it to clean the filter...kind of pisses me off