Hi: I'm a bit late, here but I wanted to comment on this. I have a Yardman mower which I think is made by MTD. Anyway, I have the 17 hp Briggs engine with a 42 inch mower deck. The unit is about 6 or 7 years old and I just broke the drive belt for the first time. And, just like you, I found the pulley right below the engine is frozen tight on the engine shaft. I drilled out the key and used PB Blaster and penetrating oil but that didn't help. I finally had to resort to using a heavy duty reciprocating saw with a metal cutting blade to saw thru the pulley, vertically. Of course, this destroyed the pulley. But it finally did come off the shaft. I have a new pulley supposedly being sent by UPS. Curiously, unlike what the instructions in the owner's manual said, I did NOT find a washer separating the pulley from the PTO clutch when I removed the clutch. I DID order a washer from the supplier along with the new pulley and slot key.

Ralph, I had two MTD machines. One was rusted beyond use but it¡¯s auger drive assembly was good. To make a good machine I had to combine components from both machine. Both auger drive assemblies had to come out and a swap of impellers had to happen. The first issue was knowing if the rear auger support bearing should go forward through it hole to remove the assembly through the intake shoot housing. No, as you mentioned the bearing has to be pulled off and the drive slide out after. The first one was banged off while on the machine so probably damaged the bearing. For the second one I widened the whole and pulled the assembly through. A bearing puller had to be rented to get the bearing off as it was very rusted. The next issue was getting the impellers off both drive shafts. Given how rusted one of the machines was and how difficult it was to get off the bearing getting the impellers off seemed impossible. I applied WD-40 overnight but after a lot of hammering with a long punch on the impeller lip neither impeller would move. I emailed a guy who works on these things and asked if there was any magic way to deal with removing an impeller. He said no and that he uses PB Blaster. I picked up some PB and gave getting them off again another try. I put on PB for a few hours and after a number of attempts to get them loose they finally broke. I¡¯m not sure if the success was due to PB or just repeated banging. As a test of I put WD-40 and PB on different sections of the very rusted impeller blades. After a half hour WE-40 did not creep very far beyond the 1 Â0Â5 strip I put on the blade. The PB spread itself over the whole blade. I put some extra WD-40 on the blade but it did not creep further. It was pretty interesting and the PB may have been responsible for helping things out. It¡¯s tough to be sure but I¡¯ll probably use PB instead of WD in the future. I¡¯m new to snowblowers so the exercise was a good learning experience. After cleaning up the drive shafts and impeller insides I put them back on and found they fit fairly loose on their shafts so a rust bond should not be that bad. The very rusted machine was so bad the bucket was missing in places and paper thin in others. The bottom gear housing was half rusted away. It¡¯s drive and impeller were probably about the toughest rust condition I¡¯ll come across in the future so it¡¯s good to know that with a bit of persistence they can be separated. Thanks for the help. David Here is a link that might be useful: Ke Dawei's website

We inherited a Troy-Bilt tiller with Gardenway TH 1018 on the tiller and a B&S engine # 171437, prob 1992 built. Engine runs great, tines move forward & back, but not fast enough to do more than make a scratch on the ground. Looks like a place for 2 belts, but only one there. Need 2nd belt? Also, don't see any levers for the tine and wheel speeds to be run separately. Only tillers I'm familiar with are the front tine models where you have to pull back really hard to make it dig in. Shouldn't the tires and weight of the machine do that work for me? Any help would be appreciated. Have a friend that "dabbles" in mechanics, but we need a manual or something. -- THANKS!

Claude, You can skip to the quick by scrolling down to where I discuss "Rear Bearing Removal" if you want. You've received very good advice with the posts that I see to your original question. You can do a search on The Tool Shed Forum for the string: "olddufus" to see some of my advice and heart aches with my horse. But here is some direct advice in case you come back to check: I discovered from the school of hard knocks that the shaft gear that you referred to is adjusted for proper fore and aft position by adding/removing (usually adding as the bearings wear) shims at the rear of the unit where the tines "tie" in. In my own sad experience, the bronze worm gear was so worn down that it would hardly mesh with the steel worm gear above it. My 1st wear-down occured from Dad's original ownership and my own, we just ran that "puppy" until the bronze gear failed and the tines rotated freely with a clicking sound as you described. Preventive maintenance that we never knew to do would have been to add shims at the back end of the unit (three allen-socket bolts are loosened to remove the back cover off the fore and aft shaft). The second wear-down to my own bronze gear replacement occured I think as an accident when I failed to tighten the three socket bolts on the back cover. This would have allowed the steel worm gear to travel too far back (aft) to the point where it begins to disengage with the bronze worm gear and proceeds to "grind" it into a poor little pile of sharp brass fileings. Another factor might be that my bronze gear should have come with a package that included new spacers (shims) that MTD says is needed on rebuilds since they have redesigned the unit to take new bearings that have a different depth of race because the auto industry doesn't make the old kind anymore. You are probably OK, because your bearing of concern is on the drive shaft, not the tine shaft according to your post. Rear-bearing removal: If our Troy-bilts are similar, and I suspect they are (serial numbers from 1001 to 639,999) then you should be able to get to the rear bearing by removing the cover cap at the rear of the unit held on by three socket screws/bolts that receive an allen wrench to turn them. This rear cap has a protruding boss on it with milled surface that bears first against a paper/fiber gasket. If you tear the gasket, don't fret, you can probably buy a sheet of gasket paper from a local auto parts shop and trace the old one onto it for a pattern. After that, you should discover that there are perhaps one or several shims (very thin and slender-looking washers that take up space to remove play between the drive shaft and the bearing). They should nearly fall out or maybe take a magnet pen to coax them out, they should all be very loose. Now you should only be faced with how to remove the actual bearing and its race that was hiding behind all those parts: Take this advice at your own risk, but in my case, I discovered that if the belts and reverse disk are first removed from the front of the unit as well as the engine and cast steel engine mount, the double pulley at the front of the trans housing is exposed. You can remove the snap ring from the shaft near its end just outboard of this pulley using a special tool for the purpose. (The tool looks like a small pliers, but works in reverse with two little pins that mate with the little holes in the snap ring to expand and extract it from the shaft). Now the pulley should be able to be slid off the shaft (I don't recall it being a very tight press fit). Okay, now the front end of the very long drive shaft is exposed. You may want to "cap" it for hammering protection at this point. Just find and old plastic cap like what they put on cheap metal pipe table legs to prevent scratching the floor. Or, just hold a hard wooden block on the end of the shaft while you hammer. Make sure all gears are in neutral. You want to avoid "mushrooming" the front end of the drive shaft! Now hammer descretely on the shaft to drive it towards the rear of the unit and monitor your progress as the goal will be the advancing of the rear bearing TOWARD THE REAR OF THE UNIT until it exits the rear. You see, the rear bearing has no "seat". It is held in place by the rear-end cover and shims that you removed. In my experience, the drive shaft simply worked its way to the rear and any gears that it contacts simply ROTATE to allow its rear-ward travel. Just in case you need to replace or temporarily remove the bronze worm gear on the tiller shaft that runs perpendicular to the drive shaft, it removes to the left of the tiller (looking toward the front from the rear of the unit). The tine cones should first have been removed by unscrewing the hex nut on either cone. Then the cones simply slide off outboard and two tine "studs" are exposed which can be grabbed with a vise wrench near their middle and unscrewed from their attachment to the tine drive axle. Now remove, I think (4) socket screws and the cover and gasket. You should have a huge, gapeing hole in the left side of the trans housing in order to remove the gear, bearings, and tine axle shaft to the left. One final piece of advice in case you actually have the guts to go this far in the rebuild: When you reassemble everything, you may have to purchase additional shims to remove bearing play. I suggest you test the tightness by screwing the rear cover described above snug tight and move the shaft to the fore and aft with your fingers on the FRONT end of the shaft BEFORE you reassemble the front double pulley. You want a SMALL amount of play, perhaps 1/32 inch, it is a matter of feel and gut feeling. Too tight and you could burn out your new bearing. Too loose and there goes that expensive bronze worm gear into metal fileings. In my case, I think I had other contributing problems, but I really think you will be OK if you sense that the shaft play is no more than 1/32" according to "feel". Look at a ruler while you make the adjustment and convince yourself the the play is to the order of 1/32". Again, take this advice at your risk, I'm just a "back yard mechanic". Also, here is a site where you might go to look for parts if you plan to go mail-order from MTD: https://www.buymtdonline.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10101&catalogId=15601 Hope all this helps!