Mule drives for mowing decks

[dodge trucker]

well, I discovered a difference in the 782 mule compared to the older QL mule..
the 782 mule has separate pins to engage the front QA grooves at the front of the tractor, where the lock lever cinches it down, from the shaft that the springs and torsion spring ride on. My older,clapped out original QL mule has the QA latches engaging on the same shaft as the idlers ride on... this puts the idlers further forward, meaning I need a longer belt to use that mule.... discovered this after I cut off the QA engagement pins that had big grooves worn into them, cut off the threads on a pair of 1/2" x 4" long Grade 8 bolts and welded the rest of the bolts w/o threads, onto the mule as replacements,
and rewelded some spots on the deck hanger carriage to compensate for it being worn out, and moved the front hanger loop over to make the deck hanger carriage that came with that mule, work with it....

and none of the belt lengths shown in the Belt length sticky seemed to make sense for this combo.... so back to welding up the slop in the QA mule and redrilling the holes to tighten things up.....

the deck that I am putting on here is a converted 392 LT deck, that I put the reinforcement plate, spindles and pulleys off of a rotten, "patch-on-top-of-patch" 44a that I scrapped out last year.

I had this deck on there with the original mule and deck hanger carriage from said 44a deck, and it seemed to work great, with a belt length that I did find in the sticky chart elsewhere on the forum at the time, but the problem was that I could barely get any lift out of the deck.... I played musical chairs with mule drives and deck hanger carriages last summer, and found the whole setup from the 44a worked best... but still only about 1" of range from full down to full up at best.
2 of the mules I have here and deck lift carriages look identical (to me) but it seemed like I got more lift from the one I settled on, than the original one I tried... I tried the setup from a triangle deck, and it was definitely a no go.
(I didn't have the 782 setup until just last weekend)

Experimenting with the 782 setup last night I found the real problem... the spiral pin that holds the deck lift lever to the shaft that passes thru the frame is busted and the lift lever is spinning on the shaft.... has nothing to do really, with the mule drive and deck hanger carriage. This tractor has been a fight ever since I revived it.... when I got it, it wasn't running, and had rotten tires on it and no deck...
I found the retainer screw for the governor gear laying on the frame and a couple of other oddball issues so I never even tried to start the engine at that point, I yanked it and completely went thru it, total overhaul....
that went great, runs good and starts easy now,
I put solid mounts on, did the cradle mod, and complete new clutch, plates and all.... tractor itself is doing fine since, but have had 2 decks and 4 mule drives on it....1st was a triangle deck that I had from my 129 just to get it going... but took it off because it had a screaming spindle and I need to get blades for it anyway...... put this deck onto it, cuts and works fine, runs quiet, but just been fighting this no-lift problem.....