I hit a rock hiding in the grass tonight with my 72D auto connect on the 3046R. It completely trashed the bracket that holds the front chute side antiscalp wheel. I have tried bending the bracket back, but it is too crumpled.
Does anyone have any advice on next steps to fix it? It doesn't look like the parts catelog sells the "weldable" parts to the deck. I'm not sure if the dealer can get one in if i ask them.
I am a decent welder and have a plasma torch to cut off the old bracket. I would prefer to fix it with a factory stamped part over needing to fab my own.
I'm thinkin you are SOL on getting a replacement weld-on part from the dealer … :unknown:
You'd probably either have to fab one up yourself, or find a Metal Fabricating shop that can replicate a bracket for you ...
I would heat the bent metal with and oxy-acetylene torch and bend it back into place that way and weld repair as needed. You can always touch-up the paint.
same thing happened yrs ago to my 62D on the 2520--same side-as OP's bent one. my neighbor over the ridge has a shop--back then he had a :think: machine that he used to cut the piece off of the deck-we then straightened it the best we could-wasn't all that bad--he re-welded it back to the deck--but my aluminium round pin was bent too--he put it in his big press-after he was done with it-u couldn't tell it was bent ever.
what did i hit--a thumping locust tree stump-i knew it was in the weeds-cause i cut the tree down myself:banghead: needless to say it got dug out when i got a dozer back.
Thanks Everyone for the advice. I'll get some carnage pics tomorrow, as I took the day off work to try to fix it/get my hayfield of a lawn cut.
I'm going to try one more attempt at heating and bending, but my first one didn't go very well, even with the cold chisels and some 5lbs of persuasion.
I have semi-committed to creating a new bracket, as I already did two iterations of cad drawings, and had a guy at work water-jet them out of cardboard to check fit.
The second iteration looked pretty good, so he is going to cut them out of metal for me to have as back up if the bending fails.
As you can see from the old bracket, it was pretty well toast.
The new brackets were cut on a water jet, I also used 3/16th steel instead of the original 1/8th. I will also note that the steal John deere used must have been a very low grade or at least low carbon steel as my plasma torch cut through it light butter. I have owned the torch for 10 years now, and know how good steel at that thickness should cut, this stuff liquefied 3 times as fast, and with a larger width than the stuff I buy/use for other projects.
Here are the final shots. The wheel bracket was higher than I wanted it to be, however with it located where it is the wheel goes on straight, and is at the right ground height to match the rest. I think the reason it is higher is a combination of things. The first being my angle was slightly off on the brackets, by about 3 degrees. It looks like it is much more than that from the photos, but that is the because of the second reason. I was unable to fully bend the mower deck portion back to its original spot aka the side being perpendicular to the top. There is still some bend in it, but the blades now clear the side, and it seems to be mowing ok, so i'm going to leave it at that until the next time.
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