Here's how these go. Bearings are replaceable and can be sourced at nearly any decent OPE dealer or bearing house. The lowers take most the wear and if you wanted to do it on the cheap- you could get away with just the lowers on your own equipment. After driving out the shaft, give the tops a roll w/ the tip of your finger. If they roll smooth, they're ok. About a 1/4 of the time the lower bearing comes out with the shaft -meaning you would need to go through the work of pulling or have it pulled from the shaft. BTW, don't remove the spindles from the deck to do the bearing work. 143651 is the complete mandrel # should you have a cracked leg. You can also replace just the shaft kit. They used to come with both bearings, but I think they now include only the lower.

Thanks Tom,

I see that now, I just made an assumption that you had to replace the whole thing.

Ev

Back when i was just starting out with fixing mowers, and really uninitiated in the whats and whys of mower spindles--i decided to replace a noisy mandrell on my Craftsman Lawn tractor deck.
A liberal application of PB Blaster seemed like it would work, so i applied it, allowed it to sit and soak in, then applied the socket wrench and----SNAP! That loud SNAP told me to go buy a new mandrel, with all of the parts associated with it. I have learned a lot since then.