And I did it all by myself

So I have two days before Hubby gets back (I thought it was one day, so I didn't go to work today to spend the day cleaning. Oopsie!) One of my tasks I gave myself was to get the mower repaired and get the lawn mowed, since it hasn't been mowed since the mower's catastrophic failure.

The repairs that are need are the tension spring that engages the blade belt needs to be replaces, and I ordered a new front wheel, because the valve stem on the one I messed up is damaged and the Mr. Tire down the road can't fix one that small. :(

The wheel is easy because all it is is undoing a bolt and putting the new (hopefully already seated and filled) tire and wheel on. The tension spring is more complicated because it (oddly enough) has a lot of tension on it, from the blade drive belt that is pulling against it. You can apparently reduced a little of the tension by raising the whole deck, but it only helps a little. So I needed a way to pull on the spring to get enough slack in the belt to slip it over the last pulley. I am not strong enough to just use something like a hammer to hook onto the thing and pull, while using my third hand to reach around to get the belt on.

The thing I ended up using was something I wasn't sure was even going to work. Hubby has a bunch of tie down strap thingies that have winches on them. I was able to hook both ends onto sturdy parts of the mower. (That was actually the hardest part: finding the second thing to hook onto!) and then start doing up the winch. Hubby also has these clamp wrench things that you can securely clamp onto something to give you more leverage. In addition to giving me the last bit of leverage I needed, they also allowed me to keep my fingers away from the thing I thought was going to snap. So, a few winch strokes, a few more that were harder, then the last couple that I did gingerly because I didn't want it to fly apart in my face. Et Voila! The belt slipped over the pulley!

Now. To undo the winch strap without a violent snap in my hands... hmmm. Didn't think that far ahead.

Well, I ended up getting it undone, still have all my fingers, no black eyes. Yay me! The hard part is done, but I'm still waiting for the tire to show up.