Riding Mower Problem

Fired up the mower this evening, let it warm up a bit and starting driving slowly. After riding 10-15 seconds the mower dropped out of gear and stopped. It will not engage at all now cannot go forward or backwards. Also the blades will also not engage either very very stiff/difficult to try and engage them. It's a Craftsman Model LT 2000. Engine runs great! Am not the best mechanic but any advice or simple things to look for or try would be greatly appreciated. Its funny because I just put a thread out about buying a trailer or truck. Fired up the mower tonight to bring to the garage to mount a ball hitch on it to drag the trailer I want to buy around back. Now I need the dam trailer to probably have mower repaired, pretty ironic!

 

Are the drive and pto belts still on there and routed correctly?

 

Gonna push it up into the garage and get it on jacks to see underneath. Also going to go back over the area it slipped out of gear make sure nothing isn't laying there that might leave a clue!

 

Both blades and drive down at the same time but engine running just screams of a belt issue.

 

Does it have a hydro trans axle? Those are know to go bad as did the one on my dad's. Also check the drive belt.

 

cannot add anything else to help.. sorry but as I still got a foot of snow and 8 degrees I got to fix snow blowers not lawn mowers!

 

If it's belt drive, you may have broken the main aluminum pulley that spins the transaxle and deck belts. Ive seen that more than once.

 

Belt popped off, belt broke, pulley seized up, idler pulley pivot point seized up, mower bearing seized and burned the belt, look it over, push in clutch see if everything is functioning as it should

 

Thanks fellas gonna get it up jacks and see what's happening under there. Will report back in!!

 

So I finally got her jacked up to take a look underneath and low and behold this is what I found. As mentioned by someone the issue screamed of a belt issue. Problem is I haven't a clue how to repair, lol! Trying to go through manual now and see what it all should look like under there but again am not a good mechanic!

 

looks like idler bearing froze rest of damage caused by friction of belt on composite sheave. Doesn't look like a difficult repair. New belt and sheave.

 

Thanks Chris! Trying to get a visual of it so I an follow, not sure where the belt is suppose to go. Also do you think this would affect the blade level? That seems very difficult to engage and LN when I tried to engage it seemed to want to cut the engine out....!

 

I'd guess something similar to this for the belt routing.

 

Frozen bearing put excess drag on system - stall eng.

 

Thanks Chris, she's in the shop as of this morning..........little over my head, hopefully i'll learn a thing or two going forward.