Today I broke down the mower deck spindles. While I neglected to take pictures when I removed the blades and took the assemblies off the deck, I have mocked it up here. This is how I got these things off and took them apart.
To remove the assembly from the deck, the first step is to remove the blades. Here I have a complete assembly. You'll have to imagine it's still on the deck.
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On the topside, there is a 1-1/4" nut welded to the pulley. To hold the shaft from spinning while you remove the blade nut, you put a 1-1/4" box-end wrench or socket on this pulley nut. Don't bother with the 1-1/16" nut that sits on top of it for now, you need that in place while you remove the blade.
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Put a 1-1/8" socket on the blade nut. In my case, this wasn't going ANYWHERE without the impact wrench. While holding your wrench on the other side, hit the blade nut with the impact wrench. Remove the nut, and now you can take off the blade, the washers, and the small cap off the spindle.
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Now you can remove the three nuts holding the spindle to the deck. I used the impact wrench on some of these, a cutoff wheel on some others. Remember that you have a carriage bolt in a square hole on the other side, and try not to let it rotate to round out that hole. You can put a screwdriver under the nut once you get it started to keep the bolt head all the way into the square hole.
Now you can remove it from the deck, and you have something that looks like this (hopefully, in your case, prettier.)
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Now you can remove the larger part of the spindle housing. I had to put a screwdriver in the gap as leverage to get it off.
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Now you're down to this:
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Now you can flip it over to get the pulley off. Note that it is not
clamped into the vise, it's just sitting between the jaws, with the top of the vise providing a place to sit the assembly on its flanges. Now put the 1-1/4" wrench back on the pulley spindle, and a 1-1/16" socket or wrench on the top nut. This one should come off without need of an impact driver.
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With that nut off, you're now ready to remove the pulley and the mounting flange. This is where the sitting position in the vise came in handy, as you can tap the shaft down out of the pulley, if necessary. You can't turn it because there's a key in there.
In my case, two of them were pretty well stuck. So I put an old socket that I wasn't worried about trashing on top of the shaft (to protect the grease zerk) and then tapped it down.
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The assembly we have in the picture was the worst one. I damaged the socket beating on it, and it still wouldn't come free. Then I added penetrating oil, and eventually heated it up. Then I found that I could put the blade nut on this shaft and thread it halfway down. This left it high enough to protect the zerk while I gave it a few good hammer blows. Finally, it came out.
You'll note that I damaged the pulley doing this, as it mashed down onto the carriage bolts while I pounded on the shaft. With the pulley stuck to the shaft like it was, I can't imagine any other way I could have gotten it off without damaging it. If anyone has ideas, please share. In my case, these pulleys are rusted to the point that I didn't care. I was going to replace them anyway.
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And here you have it, completely broken down. The bearing assembly itself is a contained, non-serviceable unit. If they're bad, you need a new one.
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