"I've been meaning to ask this for a long time...does anybody do any maintenance to the axle bearings where the axle passes through the deck on self-propelled mowers?" The Lawn Boy Self-propelled mowers that I have had had grease zerks and I greased them. I use motorcycle chain lube on all pivot, motion, points on my push and riding mowers where zerks are not present. Some use the "dirt" argument for not lubing chains of Dixon ZTRs for example, I use motorcycle chain lube and have replaced many chains AND sprockets from not being lubed on mowers I repaired. My chains and sprockets last "forever". Walt Conner

I have the washer(s) between the wheel and the axle. The left side of the axle (user facing the mower in mowing position) has a square end that fits into a slot at the end of the axle shaft. The axle will not turn at all with no wheels on the saft because the axle shaft is locked via the square on that end of the shaft. IF you force the axle out of that square slot, if turns just fine. The whole thing is that one side of the axle does not have the square slot - the other side does.

Weight costs money, whether it is cast iron or sheet/bar steel, although cast is a bit cheaper. There is no doubt you could build a very good fabricated front axel from sheet and bar steel,it could be stronger than a cast one, but it would probably cost more than a cast one to make. The low end guys use fabricated front axels because they can get "acceptable" strength at the lowest cost. The weak points seem to be at the pivot, as was mentioned, as many use extruded sections for pivot support instead of welded in tubing and bushings. The typical "I beam" style they use also seems to be pretty weak when it sees twisting style loads. When it comes to the strenth of non fabricated axels, as was said, a forging would be by far the best, but are very expensive. Casting materials also vary a lot, but if nodular iron were used, it would start to approach the strenth of a non high strength forging. Plain old grey cast iron is not very strong, but it is the cheapest, so sections can be a bit thicker at the same price point. Cast iron also has pretty good internal damping characteristics, so it will take out some vibrations and such. It is also somewhat self lubricating, so they will eliminate bushings to save some money. I can't say what is up with the lawn and garden stuff, but there is getting to be a LOT of asian and other 3rd world cast iron showing up in products. It is usually of pretty poor quality both from a metallurgical (made almost completely from scrap) and from a casting methods standpoint. The castings I have cut apart are full of inclusions, poor mix, hard spots, sand, etc., and are very prone to failure comapared to good clean castins.

I just found this post about grease and I was wondering the same thing if anyone mixed their own grease and oil together? "Posted by ralphm (My Page) on Mon, Feb 25, 13 at 17:06 Has anyone out there seen the Youtube transaxle repair video called "How to repair a transaxle, sorry no mower mudding in this one.. . Following a minor repair, the mechanic cleans all the grease off the gears and the inside of the transaxle case. Instead of applying new grease, he uses a mixture of gear oil and Lucas Oil Stabilizer. The stabilizer causes the gear oil to adhere to all the moving parts. This lubrication scheme seems so much better than using grease. After 16 years of service on my lawn mower transaxle, I want to open it up, inspect it. and if necessary, replace any worn parts. Prior to closing it up, I want to add a lubricant. Dana, the transaxle manufacturer, recommends a grease P/N FT-4000. I like the idea of using the gear oil mixture instead of the grease, Has anyone else out there tried using the gear oil mixture? If so, how did it turn out?"