I was doing some cleaning up of my deck, and noticed some cracking around where one of the arms connects to it. Now I understand something I had been wondering about when I repainted it years ago - where the other arm connects to the deck, there is a metal
plate attached on the underside. I'm guessing the previous owner put that there to reinforce the attachment point, perhaps due to cracking. It was either welded on or JB welded on, not sure (and the bolts holding the arm on go through that plate).
I was thinking about doing pretty much the same thing to the other side - get a sturdy piece of metal from our machine shop, drill some holes in it, and run the bolts through it. I figured I'd also coat the connection point with JB Weld, and thoroughly seal
and reinforce the crack above with JB Weld. Does that seem like it should work? It's apparently been working fine on the other arm for many years (I've had it for something like 7 years).
As a point of interest - this is what I believe to be one of the early style decks, with the L railing on top of it in a triangle shape. I think I recall reading something about these being more prone to cracking?
On a completely different note: I started trying to take apart one of my wide deck motors. And this reminded me that if I were President, I would ban the use of flat-head screws. I hate those things - they're always stripping on me. I took the RTV goop "caps"
out that covers the screws on the bottom of the motor, so I could get to the screws underneath (which I think hold the armature in from below?). They're flat-heads, and not particularly deep ones. I tried turning one, and it didn't want to budge easily, so
I decided to try squirting a lot of PB Blaster on them so I can hopefully get them out tomorrow without stripping them.
Oh, and lastly - on the large deck motors, how is the top held on? Is it the two phillips screws? Or the long bolts with nuts on them?
Thanks again,
Mike
Michael S. Briggs, PhD
UNH Physics Department
(603) 862-2828