Tackled the monster today. Surprising results. Took an old belt along to fabricate friction washers, also a ..."cloth"... anyway those woven things we all wore in the military as it had good thickness and I ain't going to be using a 26" belt in the near future....:-) Disassembled the unit. Consisted of a coil spring, hollow metal tube with a 9/16" (nut size) bolt through it, and a thick plastic washer against a thick ...waxed cardboard....(like the stuff gaskets in carbs etc. are made of) washer. The metal tube was obviously to control how much the spring could be tightened. The plastic and cardboard washers were pristine, no wear, no deformation that I could see. HOWEVER, someone had oiled them previously. CUDOS TO "JUSTALURKER" who suspected this. I cleaned them up, per his suggestion. I then took the metal tube to my grinder and removed about 1/16" from each end. I did this as I could easily compress the spring against the tube and there was a lot of space between the coils. Also, since the unit is 20+ years old there has got to be wear that I couldn't see. Reassembled and tried it, works fine, motion control lever stays where it's put now. Still have some more to tighten if I need to. So happy ending to the story, thanks for all the good input. Left the belts in the barn as I have another need for a friction washer. Thanks again, Ev

Thanks for the input. The fluid looks like ATF from a car. It's red but, like I said, it has sort of a weird milky quality to it. So, did someone replace 30weight with ATF? Or is it supposed to use 30weight? I went to Home Depot, Lowes and ACE and they had no "transmission fluid" for lawn tractors and that makes me think that oil may be the way to go. One thing is for sure, I'm not filling it until I find out exactly what goes in there. Thanks again for the input!

OK. I have the belt ordered. I found out why the trans selector returns to Neutral when you let go of the lever. There is a mechanism that White calls a "scissors assembly" that operates exactly like scissors (the motion, not the cutting) to force the selector to Neutral when the brake pedal is pushed. The scissors assembly on my machine is lacking some crucial parts (they were there once but not now). The missing items can be viewed by going to your favorite website that has a link to Empart web. Choose White Outdoor > 1993 Garden Tractors > model 143U836H190 GT 185. Go to transaxle drive. Look for the inset that features item # 108 ("scissors mounting bracket"). My machine is missing: item 100 "compression spring", 2 of item 101 friction washers, 2 of item 102 bell washers, and the 5/16" nut and flat washer to secure all the other items onto item 112. Without this "friction grip" action to maintain the selected position, the "spring loaded to center" character of the tranny itself returns the selector to Neutral. I'm thinking of trying to come up with some substitue components to replace the missing items. I feel pretty certain that some shock absorber cup washers (of the right I.D. & O.D. of course) would serve as the "bell" washers. I"m thinking that some thick rubber flat washers with nylon or poly washers to actually "grip" the scissors bracket ( cause I think rubber alone would wear too quickly) A suitable compression spring could be had from a parts house (even Lowe's or Home Depot has a selection). If anybody on this forum is familiar with this topic and would like to throw in......please do.

Ah HA! Methinks I've found the problem. Was in the process of dropping the drive assembly down to change oil, starting with disconnecting the linkage at the drives. Just to check, I moved the control levers and found the left one (the problem one) didn't want to move forward as far as the right lever, so checked into that further. I disconnected the linkage at the hydro unit and moved it by hand. On the right side, which works properly, the control shaft going into the hydrostatic will rotate further for Forward than for Reverse. On the left side, the shaft rotates further in Reverse than Forward. Apparently something's backwards inside. Then I noticed that my "new" trans axles have a small bead of black silicone squeezing out at the pan mating surface - don't think that was a factory sealing method! My old ones sure didn't have that. Hard telling what went on with that. End result is that I got a used or rebuilt set of transaxles and it was screwed up somehow so the left side unit operates like the right side unit, but of course that doesn't do me any good for the left side. And heavier oil isn't going to help, either, as it is set up so forward and reverse travel speeds are switched. BTW - the vendor was yanxin1105@hotmail.com and the units were shipped out of Sutech in Galesburg IL. Yes, yes, that's ebay crap for you I guess. Just couldn't afford dealer prices which would have been more than a replacement used mower. At least I've figured it out, but now can't mow any faster than what the mower normally would travel in reverse! Guess I'll have to finish replacing the hydro power unit in my 60" and go back to using this 42" as my trim mower again.