Dismal day of frustration

It was wet, rainy and the definition of muggy today, but I wanted to finish up the tractor, so I went up anyways.  Everything was wet and soggy, so I got soaked, but it went downhill from there.

I got all the clips back in and finished getting the deck on, but when I was on the last clip, I noticed that the PTO arm was on the wrong side.  It has to be removed to remove the belt, so I apparently put it back on backwards.  Since it isn't held in with a clip, and can only be inserted or removed with the arm straight up, I had to completely remove the deck again and make it point the other way.  Grrr.


Being a well practiced veteran at taking this deck on and off now, I managed to still get it back on with a little bit of daylight left.


Fired it up, hit the PTO and.....  nothing at all happened.  The blade was twitching a little, so the drive was engaged.  At that point I was irritated and soaked, and went home.  It was nearing sunset.

Fortunately, the PTO on this tractor is a very simple mechanical device.  Two things happen when you hit the lever.  It pushes down (on the following picture) on the lever, and there is a plate that releases the two brakes that are attached to the spindles, and pulls the idler pully to tighten the belt.  It shouldn't be hard to figure out which one is the issue.  My money is that the brake on the left side of the photo isn't releasing, since it doesn't appear to be in the track.  Regardless of the issue though, it requires the deck be removed (again) to fix it.