General Transmissions Secondary Pulley RT400 GT79244 - MIA12482

This part for my John deere riding mower fit perfect and works great.

This is a review of the General Transmissions Secondary Pulley RT400 GT79244 - MIA12482 sold by General Transmissions.First, General Transmissions is responsive to questions online through Amazon. I had a few and I saw responses in minutes to hours. Also, fulfillment was quick and actually exceeded their estimate by a few days.The kit of parts is complete as shown in pictures, and includes a four-page (2 sheets) set of instructions as well as a two-page (single sheet) troubleshooting guide.All included parts are as described and fit correctly.The instructions recommend the use of Loctite 454 on all fasteners. Loctite 454 is a general-purpose adhesive gel used to bond dissimilar materials. This is somewhat different than Loctite's thread-lock products. Loctite 454 makes sense for the 4 screws securing the driver pulley system because the screws thread into plastic.For my application - a John Deere D-105 mower - it was necessary to remove the mower deck and rear wheels, and then to remove the transmission before installing this kit. Start-to-finish, the work required to install this kit of parts is easy and straightforward. The most difficult step is installing the screw atop the spring washer. I used the handles of Channellock pliers to compress the spring washer and spring while a helper threaded the screw into the transmission input shaft. I finished by torqueing the screw to its specification.I noticed a slight discrepancy with regard to the specification that screw's torque. The included instructions state 19.5 inch-pounds, plus or minus 1 inch-pound, which converts to 1.6 foot-pounds. Both the General Transmissions rep answering a question posted online and a General Transmissions video state 2.3 foot-pounds. The difference is admittedly small. I pointed it out to the rep online and they indicated they'd check into it. "Although it is a small difference we want to be sure we are sharing the correct info, especially in both places- on line and in the included instructions." I think that's an excellent response, and it arrived within 45 minutes of my posting.There was one other point at which I had some concern. The replacement drive belt was marked with what appeared to be direction-of-travel arrows, while the original belt did not. There was no mention of this in the instructions so I was uncertain as to whether the directional orientation was important or not. I needed to temporarily disable a safety switch and briefly start the motor to determine the correct rotation. It might be a good idea to check and determine belt travel direction for your application BEFORE disassembly.Wow, there sure is a lot of plastic in there! I think that if the pulley halves (labeled 'mobile flange' and 'fixed flange' were made of metal - say, aluminum - then they'd never have failed in the first place. Since the manufacturer has been so responsive I'll likely pose that question online.Concluding, this is a fine kit of parts for making this repair. The price is fair. Performing the work yourself will absolutely save a ton of money over having it done commercially. The work is easy and doesn't require anything more than common hand tools. The work can be handled easily by one person, although having a helper to place the screw I mentioned and to assist in lifting the transmission back into place is not a bad idea.As to why this repair becomes necessary so quickly (112 hours of residential use, in my case), well, that's a different kind of question altogether and not covered in this review.I plan to explore that, as well as my particular failure mode (with pictures) and what I did to try to repair it, on my blog. Watch for it.

good so far

It worked good on our John Deere riding mower.

Replaced a variator on a customer's D105 and this part went in quite easily, after finally getting the old variator off the shaft. That wasn't fun. This kit works well and I modified by adding a thin fender washer to the spring retaining screw to beef up that top spring retainer collar. That's still quite thin metal on this replacement unit and the problem with these are, the normal use vibration of that screw under the retainer cap for the spring; it wears the cap out and blows off the top through the now-enlarged (and weakened) screw hole. This will prevent that from happening. Read about doing this on a John Deere Forum. Anyway, recommend this kit for a good, inexpensive solution. And yes, the deck AND the transmission has to come out to do this job. Just watch out for the position of the mower (not blade deck but the actual PTO belt to the transmission) drive belt in relation to that new variator spring when you replace the tranny. The belt needs to be on the outside of the spring. If on the inside, it'll rub the spring and destroy the belt and your brand-new variator. Follow the instructions and call the gentleman from General Transmissions if you have any question, they are great.

This part was a perfect match for the factory one. Word of warning watch the transmission removal and re-install videos! There are several stepsThat have to be done in order. It’s not hard to repair just several steps to do so.

This was exactly what was needed! Works great

I went to the John Deere dealership after my D105 had started to slow down quite a bit and they told me to buy a new one because the transmission was shot. I bought this and it took about 20 minutes to change the mower runs faster than it did when new. It is 9 years old with 200 hours on it.