How the Pro's Level a mower deck, Fix steering problems & set Rake for the best cut quality 4k video

you're gonna show us step-by-step everything to look for so that these guys can take the oldest mower out there and get it fine-tuned and adjusted so it's cutting like it was the base came off the factory floor that's right we just want to get it cut again so really what you're doing is right now you're not leveling the deck you're leveling the frame and the machine itself to the ground first before you even begin to look at the deck is that right frankly and and that's the biggest step everybody forgets about nobody goes there so if you flatten entire cut it chance of me buying the exact same one was on there pretty rare yeah okay so if the guys go out and put a new tire on they puncture one even though they're put in the same size tire on that may not have the same circumference it says it's the same size on the side of the tire but it doesn't necessarily mean it is actually the same size okay so this one here with 73 inches yeah 71 okay so if I try to put these on the same one that's the same tire they're two inches off so you can stretch it out you can't trinket so you've got a strict suit you've got two tires your track your machine's not tracking right you measure the circumference of the tires and then whichever one is bigger you've got to take the smaller tire blow it up beyond what it's rated psi is leave it set in the Sun to expand it out and then put it back down and then put it back on right so the tires are no different than a bag of balloons right you're pulling out they're not the same size you blow it up and you stretched it out yeah it's rubber you guys can probably get a machine to track straight going forward the problem is when you put it out into the neutral now this pitaya is going to be trying to roll backwards and you set my parking brake you're gonna start burning up the hydro what what all the guy was trying to do is get his machine the dryer straight he burned up tiger I had no clue all right thanks Fred that's for blowing my mind one more time honestly I had no clue I've never heard that in my entire life I mean I've been working on equipment my whole life [Music] yes the humans got flu over 2,000 pounds okay Richmond tired okay and the big issue with that is is there are no flats right they're still not flat yet but there's no rubber left it was just a super thick carcass okay so on this one here landscapers love them because there's no flat tires right right the problem is all the treads worn off of another whole machine set in too low and that's putting their deck out of adjustment right that's the problem so they've already maxed out the adjustment there okay looks like they got brand new tires on the rear on newer tires so would that throw the rake out a child it actually breaks my bad on this one just why these runner down the front for the vacuum coming up all right Fred and I are already getting it okay guys I want you to meet Fred you are the senior service technician for Exmark at their factory where they build all these things right that's right how long you've been doing this oh this fall be 26 years so 26 years and you and I talked on the phone for about three minutes and I was like I was with Lloyd yep and I'm like Lloyd I get it gets right out here what do I got to do do I gotta fly to him and so then X mark actually arranged for you to come here but you're gonna show us how to get the mower back in adjustment because a lot of guys are having issues with cut quality correct me if I'm wrong but what would happen to me what makes tough quality issues is it wearing out of tires different operators look so so for me when I troubleshoot it over the phone I ask them what's wrong with the cut you know so if they're scalping the ground on too low right yeah if it's Jerry Stepan I know it's cutting uneven when they go down and buy so that's the tricky one a lot of people forget about is that if you have that where you're going down and back and you see the decks not the level or the cuts not level okay you matched left side this left side right side with right side so it's the whole unit that's moving and not just the deck this site this didn't suddenly jump up happen so what you're seeing is when you go down if you're out of level one way and then you when you come back that stair stepping right and then it's like the opposite way so it's like your lawn look kind of looks like that would that be a fear well sure when you go down the back you're gonna look at the lines right where ya up your overlap yeah you're gonna see that one's a half-inch off than the other okay but you matched the same inside at the same time okay so and basically what happens is we've got a cast rope up this lightning here so why should be changed the rear tire that bearings bad tires but you're gonna show us step by step everything to look for so that these guys can take the oldest mower out there and get it fine-tuned and adjusted so it's cutting like it was the day came off the factory floor that's right we just want to get it cutting it again so the first thing that I always do is make sure I have even cast for ground pressure so a lot of shop floors ain't perfectly flat but you want to find the best one you can okay okay so the other thing makes you can see where this concrete was cut yeah you try to stay on one slab because the country it's gonna heave that's why they cut okay so the I want to stop sort of what his bread is saying here is your floor has to be perfectly level before you should start adjusting your deck well you want as level as you can get it okay okay no that's okay and your again being one square where they cut the concrete you're going to have best luck stay on one square not sitting on two different squares okay oh yeah yeah so you wouldn't split the difference and right go down this line right here back here okay I'm gonna just cut back there on the other side okay so okay so we've we've got the most level ground we can possibly work out from what we do that so the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to check to make sure these cast Forks have even ground pressure so basically what I do and I just use any board whatever we got grab some blocks okay so don't you boards have to be the same thread nope because all I'm gonna use these blocks for is to take the weight off the machine oh these decks no we're probably looking at a sixty deck this deck probably weighs 250 pounds so if I take the weight off of it I can tell if I have a light cast report I have all the weight hanging on to it I probably can't feel okay and typically what I do is I go ahead and pin it down so we have some stored energy here with the spring so right now I still got like my chains ain't one loose usually so my room would still have a little bit of weight on them brought ones a little bit like so if I can take this height adjuster now that are protruding okay okay so you want all the way down from the machine itself so if I have a light caster need to come stand on that fort I'd never be able to feel it right okay cuz that could wait on too so all I do is leave it casters you just see how it heals and this is pretty good okay so if it wasn't good would this one be doing the crappy floppy in that one movie sitting all right okay so and on this one it's actually good so nobody ever checks is you can't level a deck until you have even force on forecast so what ahead what happens if the casters are off what then what well you have to start looking so it could be bad bearings in the front end either in the wheel or the cast for a lot of times what happens is somebody cut a tire they ruin the time not all these tires are the same size okay I have two we match them up at the factory so if that happened to get a bigger tire here that's more weight over there this whole machines weird percent heavy right so then there's cashman come on photographer bro oh so your back tires can affect your front casters as well as having a bad bearing in the back that's right everybody pretty man just when you thought we were done Fred keeps talking law in my mind iook so how does this work Fred so a lot of times when people have a tracking issue we were just talking about deck leveling but the big thing about matching your tire size is up which frustrates a lot of people is track and get the machine go straight so when I shove this stick all the way forward and they're both forward these are even right you know if this machine tends to go this way okay so that's the stagger of the rear tires okay so just like I told you earlier simple math let's say this one's 13 inches in circumference so you actually measure the tire at the factory we measure every one of them and we match the stagger on the tires as closest so you actually take a tape measure all the way around the tire on both sides to try to get them up oh you can see on this one here you see the three yeah I mean so this one was 73 inches in circumference so if the guys go out and just randomly replace a tire this one was 71 okay so if the guys go out and put a new tire on they puncture one even though they're put in the same size tire on that may not have the same circumference it says it's the same size on the side of the tire but it doesn't necessarily mean it is actually the same size okay so this one here was 73 inches yeah it was 71 okay so if I try to put these on the same one that's the same tire they're two inches off expands tire they bring it back down to thirteen is still a very tired it's a bias ply tire we just stretched it out so if you flatten tire cut it chances of you buying the exact same one on Luzon they're pretty rare so let's say the brand tire you got here was 75 inches in circumference we're gonna take that one off we're gonna shove probably 50 60 pounds out here in it let it sit in the Sun for a while it'll actually stretch the supplies in the time and you'll get it back to where you match them up or give them as close so you can stretch it out you can't shrink it you've got a strict suit you've got two tires your track your machine's not tracking right you measure the circumference of the tires and then whichever one is bigger you've got to take the smaller tire blow it up beyond what it's rated psi is leave it set in the Sun to expand it out and then put it back down and then put it back on right so the tires are no different than a bag of balloons right you're pulling out they're not the same size you blow it up and you stretched it out yeah it's rubbery I never knew that man so and the reason we do that is you only have so much tracking in these yeah so what tracking is is the speed of these two tires rotating as you go right so we have so much free travel or neutral in the hydro system yeah because when I when I'm here I'm in neutral if I pull back a little bit I'm going to reverse right and I go forward it's forward so that distance between we can cheat those a little bit and that's our tracking system uh-huh so we can adjust that to get this one all the way to the forward get this one all the way to the reverse and that would make up for a tire that's too big on that side now exmark we do one more thing we can also adjust this we can loosen these two up and we can lock this plate back to the fastest one and you can get the machine track straight that way oh so you can adjust there as well run either side you only got so much so usually it's tire pressure but more so it's the circumference of the tire it's off that's why it's tracking I had no clue all right thanks Fred that's for blowing my mind one more time honestly I had no clue I've never heard that in my entire life I mean I've been working on equipment my whole I've never heard that that's nuts you know it right look at Lani smug in the back actually company jack up the back end to leave it neutral when there's no weight on the tires you can see one tires may be going forward that's where you do your your small adjustments well what do you mean so you put out put your floor jack well sure yeah just run a floor jack underneath the back okay right into the center yeah start it up idle it move the arms in sit on the seat and just move the arms in and see what happens take the weight off one tire might start creeping forward one might be still one might be go verse that's where you can do the small adjustments to get a boss that that's where you wouldn't mess with the tire circumference you would you'd mess with this but what is mess with this mean what would Lonnie is getting to us you guys can probably get a machine to track straight going forward the problem is when you put it out into the neutral now this pitaya is going to be trying to roll backwards and you set my parking brake you're going to start burning up to hydro you don't want to be driving the tire why the brake is on I love the look on Fred's face like yeah that's a real thing man I'm just thinking on what what all the guy was trying to do is get his machine the dryer straight you burned up a typo it's okay pretty much everything people think it worked front to rear on these it's actually in an X pattern is that is this universal or is that just on X marker is that that's pretty much any any zero turn there would be the same thing as long as you didn't have a suspension system on okay what about a stand down same same so this walks in this one so this procedure is the same for all of them right okay so you got to remember you got a deck that's suspended from the frame I'm just making sure the frames low to the ground so really what you're doing is right now you're not leveling the deck you're leveling the frame and the machine itself to the ground first before you even begin to look at the deck is that right right okay and then that's the biggest step everybody forgets but nobody looks at it is that always first is that the very first thing you always want to do you can't level the deck until you figure out that you have even weight sitting on the time so once we identify this so right now we can level the deck I have even ground pressure we're good to go okay so we've got even brown pressure we know our machine is good but we're still getting a little sloppy on the deck or something yeah yeah right now so a lot of times say whenever somebody brings this unit in for service a lot of the service guys all they're going to do is check the level right okay so dad wasn't really complaining about something if there was something else going on that they would look elsewhere but say you'd say you've had one that the cut right in the middle of the cutting width it wasn't cutting you right so you got like a mohawk or a cornrow okay grasses minister something's bent on the day that doesn't really apply to this we're just kind of real leveling or checking the day okay but that's still one of the things if the guy started in this process that may be one of the reason why he's cutting in if he's got that corner or Mohawk going on what what do you mean the depths so bent blade bent that may be bent spindle they hit something [Laughter] well I'm being a service guy would be nice to know that because then I know where to look okay so okay so we've got the frame level what are we looking at so now what we're going to do is we're going to put all the weight of the deck back on to the Castor's that way the whole huge sags that's how it's going to be running on the ground like in love with that command everybody does a little bit different on their cutting height and stuff like that so when I checked my mm-hmm I just use a socket so you were saying that you forgot your socket we're gonna have like a lucky psychic I don't I didn't forget it the airport took it from me but I have an old worn-out fifteen sixteen socket but in a series the GQ socket for me yeah I think I get so what I do is I just grab a socket I measure it so three the core okay okay so we're going to gauges so being a lawnmower blade most of them there's a lot of measurements you can get for this so the lawnmower blade it's about a quarter inch thick okay so if I put this up there and I'm leveled to the blade I know I'm about a quarter inch low right okay so in fact usually if I can stick my thumb nail underneath there about needs an inch I get my whole thumb under there okay so I'm just using that as a gauge block so wait don't you have to take all of the blocking out right now Fred I do that's my next okay I just want to make sure we actually do this I just I want to make sure all the cameras are capturing this we actually want a lot of these guys to visually see exactly what you're doing so my blocks 3/4 my gauge box 3/4 what I'm going to do is put this in three four okay so your gauge block withstand a quarter right so you set your deck height at three and a quarter and you're using so you're just using a socket that's your game table so guys to use whatever they want but you've always use a fifteen sixteenths inch socket because it's just muscle memory at that point well nice thing is is that a lot of people try to measure to take an actual measure yeah we really don't care sometimes it's hard to see underneath there so what I do is use a gauge block and I can tell what the pipe is without laying down underneath we're not trying to get a tape measure right get it in there yeah so when we're actually what you're saying this kind of different story but when Frankie building decks he's got to get the spindles to the same height he uses he just cuts a block sets it up there put the post in put the post in he never matters it just puts the same but that's exactly what we do at the factory we just use a gate one okay got it so got my blocks out if you got your deck height set to three and a quarter drink port you got your gauge mechanism right there yes I'm socket show and obviously you want to make sure the blades are in good shape you know brand new blades so I just come in here and I gauge it so I can feel that a little bit lower so I'm guessing I'm probably about 3/8 maybe not quite a half okay and then when I come to the back I'm going to simply see how much wave is in there do you want that much Drake so they're not here you're not on the blade here on the deck oh right there okay so I'm about I made to an inch high in the back yeah I was gonna say that looks like it's definitely high yep okay so if you guys missed it this deck is sitting Kitty Wampus forward leaning forward so we call that positive breaker pitch okay so the rake is the angle of the old deck positive I mean tell me about that so there's a lot of different reasons why you put rake into it and stuff like that but pretty much the nuts and bolts of it is when you add that pinch of that rate to the day it really helps with discharge so you want some rank typically how much drink do you want in it so usually you want anywhere from an age to probably a half somewhere in there some people depending when you go down south and the breeds of grass that they have our species is go cut flat zero rate now maybe a seasonal adjustment twos their time to the season when you walk so I get a lot of guys that want to try and mess with rape and stuff like that so usually I tell them do a rear tire pressure okay so if you start out about twelve thirteen pounds what we recommend mm-hmm you want to flatten your rake out go down about eight pounds in each rear tire that would take the whole machine bitin it out uh-huh so if you want to try pasta great jack tire pressure going on probably 25 pounds and that'll help with this church well it'll give you more rake which actually makes that air flow out okay see flat isn't always the best no usually I mean probably eighty percent of the time you want positive breaking to it okay so too much positive break you'll get a lot of stragglers no rake you'll get real heavy discharge women Oh God so it depends on what Ramona so you'll adjust the tires before you go on trying to even 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