Something I have seen on a lot of mowers is that the aluminum casing that holds the bearings and shaft for the blades will crack, allowing the whole blade assembly to shift to one side. Get the deck off, or if you can, raise the mower up so you can get under it, and look carefully for any cracks, breaks, or stress marks on the housing. From what I have seen, a well maintained Murray, when used for what it was designed for, which is cutting grass, not bushhogging, plowing, etc., will hold up just fine. Same for Craftsman and the others. No machine will take abuse for long without giving trouble. Also follow the advice given by others on here about missing bolts and all. I was only adding what I have seen more than once. I believe sometimes the belt is too tightly adjusted, causing the break.

Misplaced my deck and mower manuals.... It was in two parts. Briggs Twin 16hp, 42" deck, 4spd. The model # is 81-43660X92 . I've ckd other sites and Murray but they no longer provide the pdf files. I guess we can still post pictures here but have forgotten how that works...:) Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

ok tom, we did that friend of mine had multi meter, so we tracked teh power all over the place some of the solenoids already bypassed, so we did other the key start works we have no spark at the plug trying to lift flywheel the way i know how in B&S bit it won't budge, using hammer on one side, the key looks ok, i thought they all would have been electronic ignition when i was mechanic we were fitting them to replace mech' points when plunger bush was warn and oil was coming out onto points. anyhow it is getting fuel we manged to flood it, never had OHV in my day silly idea plug and lead tucked tight behind the exhaust. so reckon if we can get ignition spark it should go. thanks hey? len Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

Thanks Mownie! His is quite a bit different than the one I have. I'm in the process of mounting the snow plow on this Murray. Just haven't had the time this week end to finish doing it. I'm now looking to see if I can find a sleeve hitch that I can put on it. I'm sorta leaning along the lines that the blade on this won't be heavy enough for dirt work, unless it was already loosened up. It isn't a dozer blade and the tractor won't be heavy enough for real earth moving unless I have a "ground engaging " implement to hang on the back to loosen up the dirt first. Either a cultivator or some other type of simple dirt loosening implement and then try to move it. I watched a YouTube vid where a guy used a blade pretty much same as mine and all he was doing, was pushing around dust on his dirt driveway. Either way, I'd like to outfit this Garden tractor and if I don't need it later then its a fully functional garden tractor and as such will be worth more when I offer it for sale. So if any of ya out there has a line on a used sleeve hitch that I can rob, I mean buy, leave me a message and I'll contact ya. Spotted a couple of possible ones on eBay, but they are for Craftsman, got to check and see if I think I can modify them. Saw a couple of diagrams and a close up shot of one by Johnny Equipment Co. that I could perhaps fabricate, given enough time and enough welding wire, I could cobble something together. It looks fairly easy and the dimensions are out there to get the correct layout. Looking like a fairly large winter project.