More Transaxle adventures!

Got back out for a bit to work on the transaxle tonight… Pulled off the drive sheave

and the hub that sat behind it

So that I could get in behind to clean. So here’s the main input shaft…

Then I flipped the transaxle around and went after the brake band and brake pulley.

The band and the frame around it came off no problem… But I’ll be darned if I can get the pulley off…. Tried using a gear puller, but it keeps slipping. Dunno whether its just that I don’t how to use a gear puller correctly, or whether there’s something else I should be using… But while I was futzing, I decided to pull the shift lever off so I could clean around it… So here’s a look inside the transaxle, via the shift lever hole…

Those are the shift keys, right? Poked around in there a bit, they seem to slide nice, and the detente balls seem to work… AND it doesn’t look too bad in there… So maybe I won’t pull it open after all (especially since I can’t get the brake pulley off…

So, I figured I’d clean it up a bit more, so I was scraping some crud off what I thought was a bolt holding the two halves of the transaxle together, so I poked at the back end of it… And it came out… Looks like it was one of the metal dowlings… I may need to pressure fit it back in or something… But then I was curious what was right next to it, so I cleaned the grease off, THAT one was a hex-head bolt… Stuck the screwdriver into the head to clean the crud out of it… And IT was loose… Hm… Go and check the other three bolts on the top half of the transaxle, ALL FOUR BOLTS were not even finger tight! I think that explains where all the crud built up on the top of the transaxle came from! Still, it shifts nice, looks okay, maybe I’ll just get it all cleaned up and strap it all back together….