If you don’t already know this about me…. I’m cheap.

Ok, so I’m not cheap because I would rather spend 3 times as much and buy quality items, than save a buck now, but be aggravated later on when it stops working. The thing is, I don’t like to buy new things if I can repair something I already have for relatively inexpensive.

This brings me to the topic of this article. I live in Central Florida, and last year we had a category 3 hurricane blow through our town. We basically got a direct hit. If you haven’t seen my lawn in some of my Youtube videos, it has a lot of trees. I lost 1 very large tree, and decided that since the FEMA would be coming around to pick up hurricane debris, I would go ahead and thin out my trees (cheap). Since I had been wanting to thin them out for a while, it just seemed like a good time to do it. I wasn’t working anyway since we had zero electricity for 8 days. So, I went ahead and started cutting trees. In the end, I ended up removing close to 10 trees.

You might be asking, what does this have to do with a 1999 Murray Lawn Tractor. Well, after I took out all of those trees, it left me with 10+ stumps (cut very low to the ground). My intention is to eventually rent a stump grinder and grind them down, I just haven’t done it yet.

Last week while I was mowing, I made a boo boo and ran over a stump that I didn’t see. Lets just say that it did some damage to the mower. Although it still cut, it was cutting uneven and making a terrible noise. After doing a little investigation, I found out that when I hit the stump, it cracked the spindle (mandrel). It is aluminum, and it just couldn’t handle the impact. That’s where this video comes in. I went ahead and ordered a new spindle, new blades, and new belt. I figured if I was going to have to replace the spindle, I may as well do the belt and blades at the same time.

It only cost me about $60 to get it fixed, and now it cuts almost as good as new. Don’t worry, I’m going to be more careful next time, and I promise I’ll grind those stumps real soon.

Here are the parts I ordered:

Murray Mandrel: https://amzn.to/2xfFIZW
Murray Blades: https://amzn.to/2QqFp7k
Murray Belt: https://amzn.to/2OfzwZe
Liquid Wrench: https://amzn.to/2QrlJAc
Torch: https://amzn.to/2QlM3Ml

*these are Amazon affiliate links. it won’t affect your price, but I may earn a small commission if you purchase through these links.