2-Year Update: What Were they thinking of? Mower Tear Down - Greenworks 25" Twin-Blade Geartrain.
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- Опубликовано: 26 авг 2024
- Greenworks GMS 250 / 82LM25S
- stripped 1 of the internal plastic gears that time the mower blades. No YT user has been able to find replacements.
Mega programmed obsolescent engineering and support fail on Greenworks for these.
I've had this mower for a few years without problems. I wish it was made to be repairable, but we're on our own. I see that somebody is making these gears and selling them on ebay.
Glad someone stepped up. Hopefully if they are 3d printed they have the right strength properties.
I just bought a set of these gears. Thanks for the insight on replacing them.
EXTREMELY helpful! Thank you for showing the gear mechanisms. Pretty unbelievable that they used plastic gears. Had a similar issue but was still in my return period and was able to get a replacement. To my knowledge, GW does not sell spare gears. If they do not provide these replacements, there will be a consumer uprising as this mower is far too spendy not to provide replacement parts. Crazy. Thanks again!
Very welcome! Thanks for watching.
metal gears are more expensive, and will get just as damaged if you hit a root. better to use plastic and have that shear than to break something even worse if it doesn't shear at the plastic gear. It's a shame they didn't use something like a timing belt instead.
Thanks a million for this. Had exact same issue. She’s up and running again. I can’t find replacement gears anywhere so I’ll live with the noise.
Glad it worked out for you!
Thanks for taking one for the team. Looks like a nightmare having to not only find replacement plastic gears but to deal with 20 screws to get to them. Disappointing the design is literally made to last only up until the warranty expires, so environmentally wasteful.
I agree. I would have loved to have loved this tool, but sadly that is not the case.
Knowing it has some glaring weaknesses, I'm waiting for another brand to come out with an intermediate-size deck model.
Greenworks was thinking, All the kids can just 3d print their parents some spare parts!.
If anyone has luck finding replacement gears, I'd be glad to hear it. My blades started hitting each other mid mow, turns out 3 of the gears had their keyways worn out allowing them to skip. The gears themselves are fine, its the aluminum hub in the center that's bolted to the plastic which wore on mine. So far I've struck out with Greenworks service via email and phone. I haven't found internal parts for sale anywhere and the service rep I talked to said since I'm so far from a service center there is nothing to do but throw the mower away... !?! I'm the second owner so returning to retail is not an option.
My mower found a rebar that was sticking up in the lawn (previous owner effort of some kind). It really did a number on the mower. Thanks for showing how to get to the parts for repair, hopefully.
Sorry to hear. Good luck getting it back in shape.
@@ToolHombre I finally took the cover off to see what the gears looked like. I have one tooth broken on two gears ( the motor's gear and the left blade gear). I haven't found replacements for these and the unit is definitely out of warranty. Have you found or heard of any gear parts out in the wild? Thanks. Thanks again for the instructions, too. It did help a bunch.
@@qtrolazyg Someone else in this video's comments said they saw someone selling replacements on eBay but I haven't investigated fully yet.
@@ToolHombre I actually stumbled upon an ebay seller with replacement gears made of metal. I wonder if it jeopardizes the system in someway. Am I disappointed that these gears are plastic? Yes. They have "give". What is the "fail-safe" for the system if the gears are metal and, heaven forbid, I hit another immovable object? ...inquiring minds...
@@qtrolazyg My guess is that the blades would become the point of failure, but that is how gas mowers have had to operate for decades.
If I damage my plastic gears again I may just jump on those metal gears.
The way I plan on doing it is only replacing the damaged ones with metal. That way the next time I find something hard, the metal one will just 'win' against the next plastic one. Finally, when all are metal, the blades should bend before anything else bad.
I'm not super concerned about the e-motor since it knows to throw a fault when jammed and the blades don't move so I would think it would cut off before overheating itself even without the give of the plastic but.
Only validation can prove any of this correct though....
cheers!
Good video. Gave me the confidence to take mine apart. Two gears were destroyed. Ordered aftermarket ones a d installed them today. Even taken apart, it took 2.5 hours to replace. Had trouble getting bolts to line up with the holes in the spindle. Mower works great, but don't think I would do that much work again. The gears cost $87. Think buying a new mower is a better decision for me.
Sorry to hear the full repair was such a challenge. I'm probably going to follow the same path if this ever breaks down again and just replace it.
Well, we both have experience, now and every goes smoother the second time around. Also, shouldn't have started the project at 3pm. I lost my patience after an hour and half. 😁
Thank you for this helpful upload Sir. Wishing you and your loved one a happy New Year.
Glad to help!
Thank you for highlighting that this is made with plastic gears. This tells me that the product is disposable build quality, hence I will not even consider it further.
After seeing this, I wouldn't recommend it. I really wish they did 2x staggered motors like with their 40V version. One motor with plastic gears syncronizing them was a let-down.
I fall in love with this machine, but after seeing this video no way, I'm looking for a company that doesn't compromise on quality.
Yes, I would only purchase again if they re-designed with 2 electric motors, 1 motor per blade. That's how the latest battery ride-ons do it. I see no reason they needed to go this route for the walk-behind other than cost (to them).
The video is good, with a lot of information, especially the part about the gear introduction. I don't know if the manufacturer has a separate quality assurance policy for those plastic gears. I am really worried that they might break.
I made the mistake of putting my son to work using this mower and he seemed to hit every single stomp and rock in the yard and now all the gears are broken. I cant find any replacement. I dont know why any company would use plastic in a mower but it would be as big a problem if I could get more gears. Just sucks i only had it a year and a half.
Yes, they clearly did not think this through all the way. Either build robust gears or supply parts.
Just a counterpoint: it’s highly unlikely the gears are “plastic”. They are probably some variant of Nylon, AKA Delfina, Celcon or maybe Duracon. Nylon gears have advantages over metal gears in myriad ways: self-lubricating; shock absorbing ability and compliance (had the gears been metal and received that shock, they would have likely shattered or sheered teeth off); lower gear whine; lighter weight due to lower density than metal. Nylon gears are actually more expensive than metal.
I understand the frustration with Greenworks not carrying spare parts, though. I recently purchased an end-of-product-life Snow Joe 100V snow blower, and I cannot find a spare battery anywhere, including Snow Joe themselves. The inevitable death of my only battery will brick my $500 snow blower.
My stance is now that the gear-timed blades were the wrong way to go. Multi-blade decks are typically not timed, but offset and driven by belts,etc. so that the inevitable slip and give are allowed. I think they sacrificed durability for 'evenness' of cut, which must have been an inflated metric in their product development.
Edit: even if the nylon gears had give and weren't damaged, (or if they were serviceable), this tear-down is not something I would expect a homeowner to want to go through. Hitting a stick and needing to replace a blade is the typical failure mode of any mower. Now there is a weak point that fails long before a blade will. Unnecessary and complicated maintenance by not going with an accessible belt or such.
I hear you on the shady product lines. I got into Kobalt 80V early on. Now I'm wondering if I should adapt my tools for Greenworks 82V batteries and vice-versa for continuity when either a tool or battery breaks and makes the other useless.
@@ToolHombre I'm wondering if a guy could use a warm knife to remold the gear teeth after this incursion. Do you know if the teeth will melt rather than burn?
@@kirksway1 I used a soldering iron with a flathead screwdriver bit as the tip on one of the teeth if I recall. Molded okay. From there I was able to at least fix the engagement and they have smoothed themselves out a bit in service.
Thanks for showing us the gears, plastic gears on mowers should be considered consumable. It would be interesting to know if they are easy to get hold off, that noise is not really acceptable and will not last. A mower at that price should easily last 10 years of domestic use with maintenence.
"It would be interesting to know if they are easy to get hold of".
Good point. Maybe I'll do a walk through of the process to get new ones. Thanks for the comment.
The idler gear causes the blades to turn in opposite directions. The grass is thrown toward the center and then out to the bagger, I really like this system, except it creates the need for a left and right hand blade. As far as the gear I'm one of the lucky ones as a machinist I can make one out of my wife's kitchen cutting board if need be. Of courses three-D printers could knock one out before I got the material mounted in the lathe. I'd rather have the gear break than the shaft bend. I'm really careful and avoid hitting things but that is how I found your video, I know it is just a matter of time till kaboom and I'll be fixing gears.
Based on how my old gas mower performed, I would say these gears gave an order of magnitude quicker than a shaft bending. This was a softwood root, partially exposed, and it only skimmed the bark off before permanent mower damage. Just based on how I've run mowers in the past, I think the worst this would do to a single-shaft is stall. I may not have articulated that well and people are thinking I was stump grinding, lol.
I think the newer 26-30" dual blade mowers are running 2 motors with 2 shafts with blade overlap. The problem with those is price. I'll likely keep running this one until the next failure or batteries wear out and then see what's on the market.
There is a video on RUclips showing how to repair plastic gears by using candle wax for a mold then fiberglass resin for the actual repair.
Link?
I wish I would have seen this video before my son purchased his GreenWorks 25" 60V mower. This mower is a piece of junk. Cheaply made but priced ($750) like its made of gold. A Gas powered mower would have eaten that root and shot it out the chute.
Cannot disagree. They introduced a failure mode that other mowers just don't have. "Ping" on gas = oops, dulled the blades. Fixed with a grinder or a new blade.
"Ping" on this = Oops. Now my expensive mower is trash.
So I understand this correctly, you’re saying due to operating error (manual states to clear area of debris “before “ mowing) that this machine is the problem. I did a lot of research before purchasing and realized that green works are made of plastic close to 97%. Makes one wonder “what were they thinking”
Nice video btw, you appear to be a hands on guy.
I would say read the rest of the comments. The problem is that they don't service this part. No replacements.
A recent commenter said they let their kid use the mower.
It happens. A craftsman gas push mower can handle what this went through and all it would need is a blade sharpening. This was an underwhelming amount of 'abuse' compared to what other mowers go through.
If you want a mower you can let your brother-in-law borrow, look elsewhere.
That is all.
Cheers.
Thx I had thought it used separate motors for each blade, like the riding electric mowers that I have seen. But now I know why commercial lawn mowing services report that it breaks down after a 100 hours of use. I will sure not to replace my current electric mower with this plastic gear driven piece of crap... thx again...
Glad this is helpful.
@@ToolHombre on second thought, I did realize 1 advantage of using plastic gears.... vs using 2 direct drive motors, to power the blades... which is that the plastic gears, isolate the motor from shocks and getting damaged, when the blade and/or shaft gets hit... such as by a root or in my case a steel spike, that ruined the motor, of a previous mower....
good luck with your mower...
@@nc3826 Thanks. It's been mowing all spring so far.
My only concern about this being the programmed point of failure is that they don't have ready-made parts for when these strip.
@@ToolHombre "Programmed" or not, it is common sense to know that plastic gears have a limited life....And that replacement gears are needed to keep them operational...
But shouldn't the warranty cover it? I see that the Greenwork's GMS 250 that I googled has a 4yr warranty, So shouldn't they have to repair or replace it? Or if they extended it after you bought it, they may extend it for you, if you ask? You know what they say, the squeaky wheel or gear gets the grease.
And I did notice that there are 3rd parties who sell gears like this one, but the online sites ask for a lot of specs. So without gear model #, you may have to call them about how to get the specs. such as the pitch of the teeth.
I miss the good old days, when gears were made out of metal and you could take a broken part to a local machine shop to have a replacement milled out of a billet.. Damn I'm old lol.
Good luck keeping it running.
@@nc3826 online sites are $3000.00
damn dude, it's a mower not a stump grinder 😆. seriously though your video answers several questions I had. I was of the impression that it had a timed belt. This is better than I thought. While I would prefer having staggered blades to begin with the fact that the gear drive is serviceable is a big upside. As a guy that grew up on a farm, I can appreciate user serviceability especially at that price-point. If those polymer gears are all the same size I think I'd want to get a few to have on hand "just in case". Thanks for the video. The information you've presented is nearly priceless.
Do you have any idea if you can order the gears from Greenworks? I may have had that happen today. I'll have to look at it further later.
if you have a good gear for blade I'll buy it off you
I ran over a steel bolt and the mower shut off. It started back up but is really noisy. I disassembled it to see teeth destroyed on each gear. I removed broken pieces and reassembled. It starts and runs fine but the noise is deafening. Is the noise due to the damaged gears? I can’t believe they are not available.
I do believe it is the damaged gears that make all the racket. They do quiet down once the jagged edges wear down a bit, but never as good as new. Plus I'm now always worried I'm going to hit a stick and make it even worse than before.
Wish I had better news. Cheers.
How did you remove idler gear. I see how to unscrew gears on each blade but is idler pressed on?
Yes, everything under the aluminum cover on the inside was just press-fit if I remember correctly.
Is this cheap build typical across the board with Greenworks? I see they’re coming out with a few new 30inch 60v riding mowers. Try to decide if they’re worth the $3500. And for $3500 that about the least expensive battery ride on mower you can get.
I think there is a wide gulf between their homeowner and farm/ranch series. Their 'Costco' stuff is made for manicuring lawns that have already been manicured once before. I learned the hard way.
The only GW stuff I buy now I pretty much have to order from their website or the Ag partners they have like John Deere or Kubota stores.
Their pro 20" + chainsaws are head and shoulders above the rest.. You need to get that from GW direct or John Deere, etc. So it goes with their 'professional' mowers.
So yeah I think any 'good' ride-on is going to be pretty expensive.
I wonder if the 80v version is any better?
Tool Hombre
I have one of these the same two gears have missing teeth i called greenworks to buy replacement gears and was told they don't sell them to the public he said they need them for the assembly line how crazy is that I told him they should worry about the mowers out in the field so 750 dollars down the drain .
Yeah Greenworks really blew it with this mower's roll-out.
I'm thinking the gms250 is 1st generation and the 82lm25s is the 2nd generation. Hopefully they beefed up the gears with metal gears
I'm hoping so. The deformation on those plastic gears was something to behold.
@@ToolHombre Another thing I looked into was getting the plastic gears out and going to either a machine shop and have metal gears cut, or seeing if I could find metal gears online or at a motion pro store. Would be worth looking into
You should get a second motor, and controller and set it up with 2 motors which is honestly how it should be frol the factory.
Shame on me for not doing my research. Had I known this was the setup under the hood I would not have jumped on this product. I looked at the width spec of 25" and told myself that was what mattered, but reliability was actually what I needed even more.
Cheers.
Any thoughts/feelings on the mower as a whole prior to this repair and since? Thinking of buying one for this spring, but wondering about long-term reliability.
So long as you don't hit anything solid, it is a good mower. I think it would be good for a well-manicured lawn. I hear they have upgraded it recently but I don't have one to take apart.
Mine is also a Greenworks dual blade 20”. It’s 3 years old and it’s making a *loud* noise in the engine area. Runs and cuts, but I gotta find out what’s wrong with it. Going to put new blades on and see what I can see.
If you're lucky it's something rattling that can be tightened. Unfortunatelly the only odd noise I've encountered have been these plastic gears being warped
they could've used a timing belt it would be cheaper to replace and would still give in the instance of hitting something hard .
It appears the new Toro 60V Timesaver does just that! Too rich for my blood though. At least have to wait until this one totally wears out.
Would be simple enough to use one of the gears to cast new ones out of aluminum or other metal.
Will this cause the machine to run a lot louder? I am trying to figure out why mine is so much louder than my dads. Apparently I ran something over, since the blade was damaged too.
Yes! It will absolutely run louder with gears that have been damaged.
Thanks for this very helpful video, I can tell by the sound I have a gear problem also I was thinking motor bearings before watching this. I have the 82v version, was there not a small switch on the back left corner of the top plastic cover that looks like it has to be removed first. I am stuck at this point I don’t see how to get the switch off.
I don't recall a switch that had to be removed from the plastic cover on the 60V version.
I was able to pull some of the top cover off with wires still attached because the mounting screws were separate from some of the electronics screws.
A fabricator might have a hay day casting these in bronze or aluminum.
This is true. I have had one for about 45 days. The "transfer" gear split in half and the gear on the motor lost a tooth. I emailed support and we'll see what they say. If they can't provide the part I'll just tell them I intend to return it. If they won't accept it I'll file a dispute with the credit company. Depending on cost, I have also considered asking a local fabricator what they might charge to mill the gears
@@mrjackharbour u have one good gear I'll buy it
I believe a fabricator might be your only option. Greenworks made good on the warranty, but it was by replacing the entire mower. I could not find the gears anywhere.
Has anyone found replacement gears? They don’t seem to sell them and they are impossible to get ahold of on the phone
How did you get the gear off to file down ? What kind of tool did you use ?
It was a chainsaw file to make sure I was getting in between the teeth.
I stripped one of the spindles for the blade that's reversed threaded, you think I can replace it?
Find the next size up reverse thread tap and use a new bolt.
Anybody know how to remove the storage safety switch in order to remove housing cover?
Figured out how to remove safety switch. Just need to press tabs on the switch and push it out away from unit. Used a screwdriver to press in tabs in order to push switch out.
Any luck on finding replacement parts for this plastic transfer gear? I am going to call greenworks tomorrow but from my experience (and many of your other commenters here) they have very difficult customer service. Any help in obtaining this part or even a parts manual for the lawn mower in question (MO60L427) would be greatly appreciated!
Better than hitting a root on a direct drive mower. How has the machine held up over time, otherwise?
After straightening out the worn parts of the gears it is back to mulching quite nicely. Wish it had a bit more power though, if I'm honest.
There are plastic parts inside gasoline mower engines.
Not the head, block, crank, rods or pistons though. Those videos with the plastic heads so we can see combustion? They don't last long.
"Having plastic parts" and having plastic do the main shock-bearing jobs are the opposite.
@@ToolHombre The cam gear is plastic and also.There's plastic parts with the governor operation.
@@user-mc2ck9br4c Again, what you listed are tertiary to the drive of the full motor's torque against the blades coming to a full stop.
So you're saying we're ready for plastic crankshafts then?
😂
@@user-mc2ck9br4c I think you are misunderstanding what these gears are doing. These are subbing in for a transmission. Neutral-drop clutch-dump type shock. Not just timing valve openings. This is no where near the same relative stress.
I have a solution for your problem
Or just don’t hit things look before you mow
When people give honest reviews, they let people know the tool can take the punishment.
Look what Dirtmonkey does to show you a tool is tough enough to replace gas. Then get back to me.