Craftsman Set of Two 187292, 192870, 532187292, 532192870 Spindle Assembly with Grease Zerk, Husqvarna Poulan

Upping my review from 3 stars to 5 stars. So now it has been about two and a half years of tough mowing on over an acre of land, typically with tough, thick, sometimes woody weeds, and a tree root here and there, especially after the rainy season and I have had no problems with the spindles. I even managed to run over some thick wall EMT (electrical conduit) at full throttle, enough to stop the blades cold and apparently the spindles are none the worse for the experience. (Do not try this at home.) I managed to pump some grease into the grease fittings on top of the spindles after dropping the mower deck to make sure all the parts were still where they were supposed to be. So maybe I was wrong about the grease fittings; the grease is going somewhere. (See my initial review for my assessment of the grease fittings.) I hope I was wrong about that. Bottom line - I would not hesitate to purchase these spindles next time around and I can in good conscience recommend them. New edit addressing blade attachment issue. I recently reviewed and gave this product three stars based on what appears to be a cosmetic grease fitting. I left that first review portion at the end of this additional information and did not change the star rating. As an aside, after sorting out the new blade attaching issue described below and trying it all out briefly, the spindles seem to function properly. This additional review of the same product focuses on the blade attachment bolts that come supplied with the mandrel assembly that may be contributing to premature failure of the spindle bearings and/or stripping of the star/pulley attachment. The first time I attempted to attach a blade using the supplied bolt/flat washers, I discovered that the blade, although the bolt was torqued properly, noticeably “see-sawed” up/down on the spindle. In other words, the attachment bolt flat washer was not compressing the blade against the round plate behind the “star” as it should. I started looking for the problem and here is what I found. We need to start with the blades. The predominant style blade is not absolutely flat; the grass side is slightly concave and has a slight downward (or upward if looking at the blade from the grass side) “lip” on each side while the top side is slightly convex and the sides roll off (down) slightly. This slight difference can possibly affect how the flat washer compresses the blade down on the spindle, based on the type of washer used. After a lot of trial and error and measurements I discovered that when the blade was mounted upside down (grass side up), the bolt-washer would compress the blade against the spindle, making a good, solid contact as expected – no blade wobble. The star points were slightly below or even with the blade surface when observed prior to installing the bolt. Thus the flat washer was pressing on the blade. (Note: The flat washer is milled out on the top (spindle) side to clear the spindle lip that protrudes slightly beyond the star.) This is a good thing. When installing the blade grass side down (normal), the star points were protruding slightly above the surface of the blade. In this configuration, the flat washer was not contacting the blade, it was compressing against the protruding star allowing the blade to slightly wobble as there was no washer compression directly on the blade itself. This is a bad thing. If the blade is flat, I don’t think there would be an issue. However most of the stock blades I have been using for years have that ever-so-slight curvature and side lips I mentioned earlier. And that is not an issue if you use the original “umbrella” type bolt-washer as the washer and star never come into contact and the washer always compresses the blade to the spindle, and life is good. Some reviews have mentioned premature failures with this product related to bearing failures and stripping of the star-pulley attachment. I am wondering if in some of those cases, the bolts were torqued but the slight see-saw of the blades went unnoticed due to the flat washer compressing on the star and not the blade. I am guessing here, but I would imagine that high frequency vibration caused by the slightly wobbling blades might have contributed to the spindle bearing failures and star-pulley stripping issues. So perhaps the take-home here is that we might be mindful of the types of blades and attachment bolts/washers we are using and check carefully for any blade wobble however slight, before we crank old Betsey up for a day of mowing under the sun. Just something to consider – there is a reason for just about everything. COSMETIC GREASE FITTING (1st review) Grease fitting appears to me to be totally cosmetic. Both top and lower bearings are sealed I believe. I removed the grease fitting and found an empty (no grease) cylinder about 2 and 3/8 in deep with a tiny hole (maybe 1/64th in diameter) on the side near the bottom about where the side of the top bearing would be. So even if some grease was pushed through that tiny hole, the bearing is sealed; where is it supposed to go to lube that top bearing? I reinstalled the grease fitting and pumped grease in (maybe 25 pumps) until it started to come out at the grease fitting, not the bearing seal as it should if it actually managed to get through the bearing seals to the ball bearings. So as far as I can tell without actually disassembling it completely, the grease fitting is just a free customer "feel good" feature. If you look at the top bearing, and spindle (with the installed lower bearing) separately (not in the assembled mandrel) you will see they are sealed. Cross referencing bearings yields the same sealed feature. I was disappointed that no instructions came with the mandrel assembly. I would have expected, given it had a grease fitting, that it would tell me if it had been greased during assembly, what type grease to use and when to grease (i.e. after so many hours use.) I will say this, it was an easy fit all around mechanically - no issues there. Unless somebody can tell me where the magic happens and the top bearing (only) gets greased through the fitting, I intend to just treat them as sealed bearings and move on. Reliability remains to be seen.

Craftsman Model # 917.28856 Craftsman YT 4000 42” deck. I snapped 2 of the 4 supports on the spindle attachment to the mower deck. Ordered a pair of these Spindles with grease fittings having some doubts as their price was very low compared to the OEM ones. What I got were 2 identical looking spindles. The only thing different was they had grease fittings. That means they did not have sealed upper and lower bearings as in the OEM that came with the tractor. That is a positive for me as its potential for a longer bearing life. Removal of the old spindle was the hardest part. The other 2 supports broke off while removing the spindle. I only replaced the broken spindle with one of the two I received. Want to see how it works out before replacing the other good one. Install comments: (1) The deck does not have to be removed. Also you only have to slip the belt off the pulley over the spindle you are replacing. I figured this out after the fact. (2) DO NOT LOSE THE ORIGINAL SPACER WASHER that is between the bearing on top part of the spindle and the bottom of the pulley that goes over it. The washer MUST be no larger than the rotating part of the bearing. If it is it will cause friction (with part of it locked on the non-rotating part of the bearing. That will cause a lot of heat buildup and the bearing will fail in short order. The washer that came with each spindle is too large for the bearing and will cause failure if used. (3) It takes a lot of grease initially, at least 50 pumps. I needed to fill till the grease started to come out of the lower bearing cover. Just watch through the spindle vent slots. You could also fill before you install the spindle. That’s what I will do on the other spindle. It’s actually no different than greasing the tractor’s grease fittings till you see a bit of oozing out. Also similar to greasing buddy bearings on a trailer. I used Marine wheel bearing grease. The reason for this is you want to be absolutely sure you have grease forced into the bearings, top and bottom. If not failure will result from not lubricated/poorly lubricated bearings. (4) The spindle was predrilled/threaded for the bolts which was great! I tightened but was careful not to over tighten. I did the same for the nut that holds the pulley. You can always go back after the first cutting and check that they did not loosen. You absolutely do not want to over tighten the pulley nut as that might stress the bearings. Check the spindle after a short mowing and see if it’s HOT. Hot is not good. Mine was warm to the touch the first mowing, most likely from the packed grease friction and its working into the bearings. The second mowing the spindle was cool to touch. That was good. The spindles are excellent, especially with the grease fittings. The cost was great also! Time will tell how they hold up compared to the OEM ones. Points #2 and 3 are critical for a long life. Also another point I did read reviews about in so far as the spindle breaking easily on the bolt down wings. From what I hit to break 2 of them, had they not broken, I very likely could have bent the deck opening area for the spindles. A $25 spindle is a lot cheaper than a replacement deck if you know what that costs.

working well as described

This product is not inexpensive but does the job well. The one grouse is that it does not come with a set of mounting screws, which are essential. These are supply automatically from most other suppliers.