As noted in my earlier posts (and shown in a video), the heavier gauge spring does it... as well as "speed-up" a bit right at point of contact with the latch... to snap it into place. Mine works great now... makes a belly mower functional, due to being able to get it off and on easily.. would not have a belly mower without the autoconnect...Just traded my 2305 for a 1026R. Seems like they were listening to my wishlist. The salesman talked me into the autoconnect deck, I wasn't too crazy about the idea after reading about some problems people were having. Anyway I am having problems, the latch doesnt want to lock without a little persuasion from a small mallet. It seems there is a plastic bushing on the pins that fit into the latch on the deck, and the bushing doesnt allow the latch to snap into place. I have even greased the bushings and the latches. I have watched a the videos on youtube, both from Deere and from owners, and it looks like it a snaps into place, is anybody else having this problem.
Thanks
John, my guess is that the the problem showed up after it went into production. I am willing to bet that they are taking care of it as we speak. Glad you got yours all squared away.It's a shame Deere couldnt have taken care of this before they start selling them.
Glad that did the trick....just takes a little friction off the poor dimensions of the locking rod! Enjoy!Adding a thicker washer between the locking mechanism and the deck as "Jrs1959" suggested did the trick. It's a shame Deere couldnt have taken care of this before they start selling them.
Very nice write-up, can we convince you to post a pic of the fix? It would be a big help.Gents,
I read the posts and implemented both the washer, grease and stiffer spring changes to the rear latch. While friction was reduced, I found my culprit elsewhere. If you look at the 60D deck, the spring that lifts the front draft bars, it pulls the draft bars to one side. This results in the front tractor frame being out of alignment with the draft bars as one side contacts the tractor frame first, then pushes the deck/tractor out of alignment. I always got one side of the rear latch contacting fine while the other side had as much as a 3/8" gap causing me to get into a tug-of-war with the latches/mower.
My fix was to put an electrical tie wrap on rear end of the front draft bar lifting spring, and using the nearby spring latch hard point (there are two) to anchor the tie wrap to, I forced the spring into alignment to cause it to pull/lift the draft bars evenly and directly to the rear of the mower deck, thereby maintaining mower/tractor alignment. It worked like a charm. This then allowed me to return the rear latch spring to its original fit, lower tension spring. The result is that I can now latch the mower deck on a HARD LEVEL SURFACE every time. I also found the adjustment of the two nuts on the front draft bar to be critical to alignment and had to play with it to get it aligned evenly and latching smoothly.
The final check of those adjusters that worked best for me was the front to rear mower blade height alignment procedure in the mower manual.
Good luck with it. In the end, its a set-up issue.
G
How did you determine the "born on" date for your 1026R? Also, is this a tractor issue or a deck issue?My R was born oct 26 2011. The auto connect is smooth as butter.
