Loose Drive Pulley On a 149
 

Found a loose drive pulley on my 149. Key has a lot of wear on it
which needs to be replaced. Concerned about the wear on the crankshaft
where it was wobbling. Has some wear there and also some flaking
of the crankshaft where the set screw was wobbling. Has anyone had
this problem? Any ideas will be welcomed to fix it. Thanks

Well, you can either put a new key in the pulley and tighten the living daylights out of it and HOPE it dosent work loose. Im assuming your keyway is still somewhat useable to do this...or you tear the engine apart and get the crank fixed. There may be a way where you could take some really thin metal (like pop can aluminum or a tin can) and shim the pulley with a new key stock and tighten the setscrews. By shim I mean cutting a small peice the width of the basket pulley collar and easing it between the collar and the wore spot on the crank. Its not a true fix (its said, dont come after me folks) but it may get you along for now. Just my .02

I had this happen on my 149 earlier this month; it was 100% my fault because I didn't put the 2nd set screw in when I had the motor redone (lost it, said It'll be ok without it :bash2:) live and learn... mine spit the key out right in front of the tractor while it was sitting there running with the pto on for the mower deck. I got real lucky that it didn't score the crank. Better believe I put the 2nd screw in THIS time. A little bit of medium loctite, too.

Maybe go with the next larger size keystock, and carefully use the bench grinder to 'custom' size it?

You can use a longer piece of keystock (you can buy it by the foot) and get out past the wallowed out area of the keyway. I did this on mine. As you can see from the pics, it was pretty bad. There wasn't a lot of good keyway on the engine side, but I haven't had any problems. I ground the keystock to fit the contoured slope of the crank on the engine side I loctited it in and tightned the set screw as tight as I could. Should work for you too. Good luck

loose drive pulley
 

Thanks a lot for your help. How far out did you bring
the new key toward the clutch?

Not to far. I think if I remember, its gets in the way of the PTO. Can't remember for sure now, but some one else may know how much room you need.

I salvaged a good crankshaft in Dad's 147 with a problem like this only much worse by removing the crank and building the end up with brazing rod then turned it back down on the lathe and cut a new key-way 180 degrees off from the old one. Has been working fine for almost 25 years! The longer key idea should work too and might I add the idea of applying lock-tight to the assembly. You can always warm the pulley hub up with a small torch if you ever need to redisasemble it. Good luck!