Victa Self Propelled

My neighbour (yes the truck destroyer) has an uncanny way of totally destroying mowers. Usually twice a year it is the recoil rope that has snapped so I made some changes to minimise that problem and so far it has worked. Now this is a 2 year old Victa self propelled mower and yesterday the rear drive cog assembly was dropped in front of me. I thought it was a bendix from a starter motor but no. So yesterday afternoon I stripped down the assembly to see what plane could be put together. I had a couple of thoughts but needed the rest of the mower here to make sure it would work.
Once the rest of the mower arrived I put one of my plans together. I stripped down the assembly yesterday and looked at the thickness of the axle, less than 5mm where it broke. You can see how the shaft tapers down to where it broke. I machined this down to being 7mm OD from the end where it broke for 20mm along the taper. Then I machined up a sleeve 50mm long. I bored a 7mm hole up the middle, then for 25mm along one end it was machined down to 14mmOD. I then turned it around and made the bore to be 13mm ID to fit over the axle that runs across to the opposite side. Why the axle is not this size all the way across is way beyond my understanding but some engineer went to school for a lot longer than I ever did and thought it to be a good idea at the time. So although my neighbour is bloody hard on mowers there was no offering of a reason why this broke.
So I did a trial fit and all looked good so I welded the sleeve onto the broken shaft and then assembled it together along with a spacer inside and a bearing and drive cog and 2 circlips. Then put this assembly onto place and guided the main axle into the sleeve. Once in place and a trial fit of the wheel was done and good I then welded the sleeve to the axle while in situ.
Another successful story and challenge completed

Cobbadog
You do some amazing work. I think there is no end to your talents. You are way beyond my understanding of things mechanical.

Thnak you for your kind words Morris. When I took it apart yesterday afternoon I had to guess what the rest looked likee so I had a couple of plans to attack the problem. When it turned up plan A was the go so I threw a small off cut of 20mm rod in the chuck of the lathe and bored a 9mm hole. That was the first stuff up it should have been a 7mm hole to start with so the off cut went back to the crap pile for future stuff ups. New piece of 20mm rod was bored then machined up to suit. I still don't understand why the shaft was tapered down to 5mm which is where it broke so a sleeve that would then fit onto the shaft that had been machined down to 7mm- then welded to the shaft after a trial fit worked well. then the rest was straight forward. Except for the welding of the sleeve to the main axle. Confined space and awkward to get at but the weld I laid down will hold.
I had a great teacher growing up, my Dad whom I miss very much and still inspires me with ideas and when I get inbetween a rock and a hard space he sort of still taps me on the shoulder and sends me in the right direction. I do enjoy problem solving with most things but not kids.

.Common problem cob,
Your first pic shows a bearing with the outer bits missing.........
The axle was originally a straight bar..........
The tapered bit was caused by the bearing bits floating around and the shaft flopping about.......
Mine wore down to about 4 mm before it fell off..........
Looks like the axle bit was originally tapered ..........., not so.............
I just cut the tapered bits off and welded a bit in by laying the lot in a piece of angle iron.............
2 new bearings and away you go............
I think that was what happened.....it was about 10 years ago..................
That happened at about 2 years old.......no problems since............
.....................Billy...................

Yes Billy, I feel you are right about the mising bearing. I ask 'Trev the Breaker' what happened to the missing bearing and he knew nothing of it. The odd thing is there wa no outer section of the bearing case anywhere to be seen and definately no balls but they could easily fall out the opening where the sleeve now lives. It sure is a shitty design and this one is only 2 years old.

.
.yep cob.
when mine fell apart i felt sure the axle had a tapered section in it too ,just by the look of it.......
untill i got the whole thing apart then realised that the inner bearing breaking up (lack of grease
from new i guess ) started the wearing process..........
The bare axle couldnt be bought ,,,,only the whole axle assembly, and they wanted an arm and a
leg for that, so i did a repair instead..........
As i said that was 10 years ago , so lack of grease in the bearing from new must have started the
problem..........anyway...... good repair on your part.............
.....................Billy................

Many moons ago I had a 1936 Ford with Chev V8 using an AP6 Valiant rear end (of all things - but it worked brilliantly)) until the rear end locked up on me. I discovered if I backed up half a car length it would move forward about two car lengths . . . so got it home under its own power. When I pulled the diff centre out I was somewhat confused by what appeared to be a circular lump of dull grey lead - the renmants of the front pinion bearing! Was an easy and cheap fix and took me to Albury, and back to Adelaide, the following week.