Landlord 20 DLX - Broken Front Wheel Spindle

FWIW you are the first person to come here with that problem on a Simplicity.
The wheel would have been cambers in for quite some time and that crack has taken 19 years to fail.
Never replaced one on a simplicity but done a few JD's & Huskies.
Worst case would be to buy 2 new assemblies and put one aside just in case.

Not many mowers now days go 10 years let alone 20.

bertsmobile1 said:

FWIW you are the first person to come here with that problem on a Simplicity.
The wheel would have been cambers in for quite some time and that crack has taken 19 years to fail.
Never replaced one on a simplicity but done a few JD's & Huskies.
Worst case would be to buy 2 new assemblies and put one aside just in case.

Not many mowers now days go 10 years let alone 20.

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"First person..." While that may be true on this forum, it's not on another. In any case, I usually apply the following logic to evaluating postings on the web: For every post I see I expect there are at least 500 similar stories out there that are not posted. People generally just deal with mechanical failures by paying a pro at a stealer and never go online, while people posting are skewed toward DIY. Even the tiny local Simplicity dealer I visited the day of my breakdown had seen it happen before.

Given the number of tractors in good shape that I see for sale that are well over 20 years old, I think tractors/mowers last a long time. Decks, motors and transmissions naturally die first, but wheel spindles should be the last to go as they are just chunks of metal that should not fail under normal use. There are lots of junkyard finds and parts tractors out there with nothing more left than frames and wheels.

BTW, I reached out to Simplicity just for grins and got back a pithy response about no goodwill being available for a machine of this age. No kidding, LOL

I didn't ask for goodwill, I asked if they had changed their manufacturing process to properly weld and heat treat these parts. Naturally I'd have to get to someone deep in production for that answer and the poor customer service rep likely doesn't have that access.

Simplicity are a fair priced mower.
Or to put it another way made to a quality standard not to be able to undersell the competition.
If it was a common problem there would be dozens of people posting about it or selling used machines with broken axels.
neither is apparent.
If there was a lot of these failures then there would be a demand for the parts and they would be on the long list of after market parts available for mowers.

FWIW I am on 4 other multi brand forums and at least a dozen single brand forums , for exactly this reason to find out what can go wrong so I know what to look for when a model I have not seen before comes into the workshop.

When that set up was designed it would have been tested way over the expected service life & service conditions and would have passed those tests.
No one makes money by manufacturing defective parts particularly when they are building equipment in the upper end of the market where people expect quality.

A manufacturing defect can be a one of because the piece of steel had in inclusion or defect.
Now if the mower was for military use and was going to be sold for $ 30,000 then there is sufficient margins to X ray each & every inch of steel used.

The only way to ensure that each & every mower has no defects is to test each & every one to destruction which leaves you with very little stock to sell.
Same with assemblies.
at some period in the process some one from the lab would go grab an assembly break it , chop it up photograph it hardness test it , stretch test it & do a chemical analysis.
If it passes then it is carry on, if not, production stops till the reason for the failure is determined.

Now there are a million & one things that can happen during manufacture that can cause a defective part .
Simple things like a power fluctuation at the instant the welder made the weld.
Or a sudden cold snap so the stock was a little too cold for welding
Or the mandrel the steel rod was bent around got chipped.
Or the steel supplier did not chop off the scrap ends of the rods where the defects are.
etc etc etc.

That is why there is a warranty period.

The bulk of problems with Simplicity are electrical , because it is a complicated electrical system or plain wear as the decks are quite heavy.