Will the Weed Wacker Work?

You better believe it!

New Belt

Belt came in. You can see the part number on it, but you should look it up yourself in case they changed.

Tried a few ways to slide it on.

 The Black & Decker GrassHog XL was already apart. All I had to do was to try and remember where I left all the screws to put it back together.

Motor and drive assembly back in.

Don't for get that spring, I did and had to take it back apart

$8 later, back in business




































Yup the Spring was still laying in the yard since last I worked on it. I was lucky I found it.









Easy project, a few screws, saved money, and you save something else from going to a landfill today.

My Weed Wacker Broke

take the Philip head screws out.
Don't forget the one under the sticker

So we are going to have a party.... Trying to get the yard looking just right!

Runnin the Trusty Black & Decker String Feedin, Weed Wackin Moechine.

and BAM! No Worky Worky!

The motor works but the line feeder is not turning.

Check that out! a belt!
The plastic teeth look worn, I hope it lasts a little longer.

Lets take it apart to see if I can fix it. 

Huhh.... there's a belt in this thing. 

A broken belt at that.

This Wacker has the motor up in the handle.

Run inside do some lighting fast Gogglin. Local places did not seem to have it. Ordered the belt. $8 and some change including tax. 

We had bought the Weed Wacker on sale, but I forget what we paid for it. So if $8 makes it work another year or 2 seems like a good deal to me.

I did run up and buy the cheapest weed wacker I could find. We did have guest coming over after all. I might do a post on it. It was around $20 and the motor is down by the reel. It might be a direct drive. It is very weak.

Stay Tuned for Part 2 - Will the Weed Wacker Work?

Drivebelt Tensioner

When I replaced the drive belt a while back I found that the tensioner bearings were rough and made some noise when I spun the pulley.

I ordered tensioner from RockAuto.com

Today I finally got a chance to install it.

Unfortunately I did not take many pictures. I started at dawn, and I was in a hurry to beat that Texas heat. Besides my hands were pretty dirty.





I released the tension on the belt from underneath the truck with 1/2" ratchet, and slipped the belt off the Air-conditioning Compressor. Used a 13mm socket on the bolt that holds the tensioner on. It was so tight that I ended up loosening the bold with a beaker bar from the top side. Then went back under to remove the bolt the rest of the way.

It was a TIGHT fit. I was able to pull the old tensioner out from the bottom. The new tensioner was a little thicker, it would not fit between the compressor and fan shroud. I was able to slip the tensioner between the fan blades from the other side of the engine and work it around to the side it needed to be on.
Started the bolt on the tensioner, but left it real loose so that I could get the drive belt back in place easier since the belt slips between the pulley and motor.
Once the belt was in place; I tightened the tensioner bolt.

Used that 1/2 ratchet to compress the tensioner to get the drive belt back on over the compressor. checked all the pulleys to make sure the belt was on correctly.
Snugged the belt tensioner down more, and started the truck.
Everything looked good.

How long? The hardest part was figuring out how to get the new belt tensioner back in. I tried a bunch of things before I discovered working it around in the fan.
It took a couple of hours, and a some choice words.

Next time will be a lot faster.

Drive belt Noise

I did some research and talked to a few people before replacing the drive belt.

Few videos on the internet and One guy in person said; It is a two person job to replace the drive belt, and that it was hard to do.
Balderdash!

Needed a new drive belt - researched -  RockAuto.com had the best price.
You need to check that site out if you have not already. I have purchased a number of things from them in the past.



Lets get to it!
Im 5,9 so first thing I did was lay down some pallets on the sides, so that it was easy for me to get to the belt from the top.

The only tools I used

I used a 1/2" ratchet, a socket big enough to fit over the end of my ratchet with an extension. With the long extension I had lots of leverage. It was easy to pull on the tensioner with one hand, and then I just slipped the belt off.

the hardest part for me was getting the new belt into position. It just took some patients and a long pri-bar (you can use anything to help you) to push the belt down.






RockAuto.com had such a price I was able to get the heavy duty belt. See how much wider the new green one is compared to the old black one.

Ratchet on the tensioner with the Socket an
Extension on the end of the ratchet.

Here are some pictures. It is real tight in there, so it was hard to get a good picture.

Long story short, it was not hard to do. It just took a little time.

The old belt was thiner than the new belt.