Lawn tractor problems.. anyone?

[bigredhead]

I know alot of you guys know quite a bit about these mowers..

This one is a Craftsman 12 hp mid 90's model.. The old man next door was mowing the lawn yesterday and something let go...

What happens is that you push the pedal and the machine stops.. same as usual.. you select a gear and release the pedal and it don't move. If you put your foot behind the pedal and pull forward ( pull the pedal towards you ... while sitting on the seat ) it goes just fine.

It has to be a tensioner or spring or something but i canot figure it out..

any ideas ?

[girlsride2]

Darrel632 was very helpful to me when I had problems. Seem pretty knowledgeable (sp?) about these things. I would pm him if he doesn't see your thread.

[Bryan Raffa]

should be a spring that puts tension on the pully for the belt check for that,find out what pully moves when you push the peddel and it should be in that area look for a hole that a spring may hook too,might get lucky and it might be laying on the deck or the area where it happend

[darrel632]

Tension spring for the pulley drive probably broke, or the mounting bracket rusted / rotted off under the middle on the drive unit. You pretty much need to go under the thing and look for the spring if its still around and see which piece is broke, Sears is real good about replacement parts and the stuff is cheap with fast delivery

[hambone]

as a recently retired lawnmower repairman,
i'd say check the spring on the brakes.
if it gets jammed or out of adjustment,
it will act the same way.
i've had the craftsman line do this many times and the brakes were adjusted too tight on the shaft in the right rear of the transaxle.

[bigredhead]

I know wich one you mean.. we tried that already.. lol...

But we found the problem this morning.. the belt goes from the motor pulley to the rear-end pulley and has only one tensioner activated by the foot pedal, this tension pulley has a BIG spring mounted to the frame up close to the exhaust.. it was broken in half and wedged into the frame behind the muffler..

Thanks for the help guys.. much apreciated !