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Toro Personal pace grinding noise solved.

17 years ago

I have the 20017 model for about 2 years. I mow with it a lot as I have tall thick Fescue. I really like the personal pace system. A couple months ago it started to grind when engaging from a stop, but while rolling made no noise. I went to Toros website and looked up my mower parts to see a pic of the transmission. I found that under the left wheel drive gear there is a tiny spring with a half moon shaped key there that engages the drive gear. I took off the wheel and there is a circlip and a washer to take out, then slide the drive gear off (remember which direction it faced). In the drive shaft the half moon shaped piece sits on top of a tiny spring. This is where my problem was. That spring was so full of dirt and grease it would not work properly. I took brake parts cleaner(carb cleaner works too) and cleaned the shaft where the spring goes, and every thing I took off. I used a thin tweezer to get the spring out and once clean put everything back with a thin lithium grease used sparingly and gave it a test run. Works like new again!

Oh the round part of the half moon piece pushes against the spring. Dont worry these parts wont come flying out when you take it apart. This will be part of my winter maintenance on this machine. Oh the Atomic blade on these is a thinner version of the Gator blade so it cuts well when sharp. I will try a Gator on here as it is thicker and made of better steel than the Atomic blades. This may not solve everyones personal pace noises but it costs zip to try.

Hope that helps.

Rob

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Comments (4)

nevada_walrus
17 years ago
Rob, the right side has the same thing. If you'll look closely, at the end of the axle, wheel off, you will find a small hole. If you'll get a point tip for your grease gun or buy one if you don't have a gun, remove both drive wheels once per year and pump grease in that hole until grease comes out of the gear. This flush's out dirt and grit and leave a fresh supply of grease.

Owners manual will tell you to grease these buggers once per year and will stop the problem from coming back. Yours is two years old so you should be fine. Early production did not have a hole in the end of the axle and one had to do the full dis-assembly you did.
robster
Original Author
17 years ago
Thanks Nevada, Yeah there is a hole thru the shaft. I have a grease gun but would rather clean them out anyway. They were full of dirt/grease/gunk. Just takes a few minutes.
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nevada_walrus
17 years ago
Full of grease it the way it should be. By pumping fresh grease through it you flush out any dirt and gunk. Your way is fine but don't go easy on amount of grease applied.

The hard crud you probably ran into was from waiting 2 years to do it. Hard crud does need dis-assembly to clean out. If you do it once per year for normal home use, you shouldn't have any hard crud and the grease gun flushing is all that is needed, quicker and less messy.
robster
Original Author
17 years ago
UPDATE: This fix got rid of 80% of the noise as it turns out I had one of the pinion drive gears that was worn out.
I got 2 new ones for $2 each and installed them and it is now silent just like new. Still a very easy fix and 30 minutes to do it. I use this mower a lot, every 5 days in spring and with only 2 months rest in the winter mowing a
large yard.

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