Blades are slow to start, sounds like slowly catch up, but they slow every time I go over grass. Why? It's a craftsman LT1000 riding mower.-

SOURCE: craftsman 42" riding lawn mower blade free spinning but wont cut

It sounds to me that you need a new mower deck drive belt, or your blades need sharpening. If the blade edges are rounded, they won't cut butter... Also, when mower is off, check mower deck drive pulleys to make sure you don't have any that are locked up or are dragging. You can check this by pulling the belt away from pulley and spinning the pulley by hand. MOWER MUST BE OFF before attempting any of these checks. You would be surprised how many people would try this with the mower running.
Hope this helps

SOURCE: how to install mower deck belt on a lt1000 craftsman riding mower

The manual will cover it.

http://www.disruptit.com/manuals/L0104168.pdf

SOURCE: Craftsman 18.5 riding mower when I engage the

craftsman decks have a positive stop adjustment for the decks. A spring atached to the blade ingadgement arm pulls the tension pully into position if the cable is rusted inside the sleeve it wont put enough pull on the ingadgment pully and thus the blades dont spin full force the belts on the mowers have no adjustments only the pully . second thing is you may want to drop the deck and clean around that pully by scraping any rust off the surface under the pullys slide good luck

Wade Mobley

• 513 Answers
• Posted on Jun 28, 2009

SOURCE: Craftsman riding mower blades will not engage

maybe the safty switch under seat might be starting to go out if that switch doesn't work the blades wont come on at all for safety

SOURCE: The new battery on my Craftsman LT1000 18hp riding mower will not charge. Anyone have any ideas?

ck for blown fuse, ck for broken wire.