It could be a failing transmission or maybe just the belt had slipped off the drive pulley and it is between the block and the top of the pulley.

Hi, thanks for your suggestion. I am not sure how to check the transmission, but the belt seems to be in place. It is not slipped off the pulley.

Could simply be that the plastic grooves on the inside of the wheels are worn. If so, time for new wheels.

The Personal Pace rear-wheel drive mower has steel wheel gears. Tilt the mower up on its right-hand side wheels (carburetor up, always) and see that the belt is on the crankshaft pulley and feels like it's attached to something on the back end. My guess is you need to adjust for cable stretch and belt wear and perform what should be routine yearly maintenance. Set the mower down on four wheels. Get a can of spray White Lithium Grease with the straw for pinpoint application and a spray can of CRC Electronics Cleaner. Remove one rear wheel at a time and spray the cleaner on the spur gear on the end of the axle. Also note the hole in the end of the axle which is there for cleaning and greasing the ratchet assembly inside each spur gear. Shoot the cleaner in there with the straw and rotate the spur gear. By cleaning it like this you will free the ratchet so it only will turn one way and clicks when you turn it the other way. When you think it's clean, shoot the grease into the hole until it comes out clean. Notice that the axle bolt and wheel hub bearing (sleeve) need to be cleaned and greased, also the wheel gear. When finished, put the wheel back on and do the other side.

When done with that, see if the drive works properly. You need free play on the handle so you can pull the mower back to you in some cutting situations, but if you have too much it won't keep up with your walking speed. Adjust the drive cable by loosening the clamp bolt on the fixed handle and sliding the cable housing one way or the other. Check the adjustment - with the engine running, raise the back of the mower off the ground to make sure the wheels are not turning. Now push on the handle and the wheels turn. See if the mower continues to drive at your fastest walking speed.

You're done until next year when you should do it again.

thank you, thank you for this info. I will begin work on this today. I just looked up spur gear and now know what that is. My question is, would a 'penetrating oil' do this or WD 40? asking because I have those already. If they can't, I will just purchase the can of White Lithium Grease and a CRC Electronics Cleaner. If I go this route, do I need bouth the lithium grease and the CRC? If I need both, is there a use sequence?

You'll need a spray can of solvent. Doesn't have to be the one I mentioned which is safer for paint, plastics. You could use brake cleaner. The spray grease works in this application because it also has solvents that dry quickly, leaving behind the grease. So, it gets into the smallest spaces while it is a thin liquid, then the grease is left behind when the solvent evaporates.

Saxman, thanks! I am beginning to do those cleaning and will report on what I find. I wanted to ask you as a way of my learning why the cleaning. Are you thinking thatbthebtransmission is good but the gears are dirty or stuck? Am asking this question since one ofnthe wheels were spinning but not the other. Just want to understand, thanks.

You're asking why a greased assembly gets dirty and stops working on a lawnmower that works in dirty, dusty conditions? I told you there is a ratchet inside each axle end gear. It is spring loaded. It's there so you can move the mower with the engine off and make tight turns. The assembly gets bound up with old grease and grit and the ratchet no longer engages, so you have to clean it out.

What I have told you to do is the easy, fast way to do it. In reality, you should remove the E-clip at the spur gear, take the gear off and clean each part. However, the fast way is good enough if you do it yearly.

The axle is one piece, so if one wheel is turning, the whole axle is turning. This indicates the simple 'ring and pinion' gear box (transmission) is working. The most likely reason one wheel is not turning is a stuck ratchet, although you may find other problems once you get the wheel off.

Another maintenance procedure is to remove the bottom cover of the gear box and pack it with grease. Some boxes do not have a removable bottom cover so I'll drill a 1/8" hole in a corner that is accessible and on the high side with the rear of the mower raised. Then I inject all the #00 grease it can hold and screw in a self-tapping screw to seal the hole. Then you can take the screw out and top it off during fall maintenance. You can get #00 gear box grease from Sten's and it comes with a tapered spout for this purpose.

If you had this grease you could use it to inject the grease into the axle-end gear ratchets instead of the spray grease, but you still have to clean it with the solvent first.

I really thank you for your patience in explaining this to me. I appreciate it. thanks!

1saxman, I have an update to this mower issue. I first checked the belt by flipping the mower to its side, pulled the chord slowly and noticed that the belt was moving with each tug on the pull chord. The belt does not seem to be laxed and not lose . Next, I removed the wheels and noticed that the gear at the end of the axle rotates freely in both clockwise and counter clockwise directions without ratcheting sound in either direction but with the axle rotating with it. The gear you can see at the end of the gear (picture attached) is what I cleaned but noticed no difference so far without running the machine. I have not cleaned the gear on the wheel itself yet. Is the gear at the end of the axle supposed to rotate independent of the axle itself? If not , am thinking no hangups there and it could be something else? I also noticed that the wheels rotated freely in both directions without the drive cable or anything else engaged.

Looks like the drive gear is rusted to the axle. The wheel gear looks like plastic and has severe wear on the teeth. I have only seen steel gears on the rear-wheel drive mowers. Also, the end of the axle doesn't look typical - should be round with a hole in the center. At this point I don't know what you have there. You're going to have to use a strong penetrant like PB Blaster on the axle gears to see if you can break them loose, Looking at the LH side, for example, the axle rotation would be clockwise, so if you tap the gear with a hammer and punch on the RH side it should break it loose. Considering the condition of what you have there, I'd say it is going to need an overhaul of the drive system to work - basically a new back end; gear box, axle, wheels and wheel bolts. Whether or not the mower is worth it your decision.

OK. Thank you. I don't know that it changes anything but the gear you see in the wheel is steel. if I choose to replace the axle and gear box, is there a difference between front drive gear box and rear ones?

Yes, the front and the rear drives turn different directions. That wheel should drive if the transmission were good. As noted before- it is worn. Some wear is natural for these, but a pivot arm that doesn't hold the wheel exactly perpendicular will increase wear. These haven't had wheel clutches since something like 2009 I think.