PTO Control Cable continuously Breaking on Troy-Bilt Pony 7 Speed

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As the summer is winding down, we still have a few lawn mows before we complete the summer season. This year I used a troy-Bilt pony 7 speed to mow grass at my property of 1.10 acre(s). The tractor worked surprisingly well however it has not been without faults.

The tractor has a mechanical PTO engagement - which features a pulley on a plate that puts tension on the PTO belt. The tension is applied via a lever with a control cable and a spring with a big hook.

The photo with the green arrow shows where the control cable bolts up to the mechanical lever. That bolt can be removed with a 10 MM socket on an extension with a 1/4" drive ratchet. It's underneath the battery compartment so getting a wrench in there might prove to be impossible. I used a 1/4" ratchet, extension, and 10 MM socket.

The operator engages the PTO lever and the cable with spring pulls the plate back - the blades start turning. The cable's conduit is locked into place with a cotter pin. As of this post the control cable has broken 3 times. The first time I hoped on Amazon and purchased a control cable, which took over a month to receive.

Once I finally recieved the cable from Amazon and put it on the tractor, it only lasted for one mow. ONE WHOLE MOW! and the cable broke again. By this point, I figured maybe the Amazon part was just low quality so I hoped on troy-bilt.com and purchased a $30.00 control cable - hoping it would hold up.

The cable from troy-bilt.com, over twice the cost of it's Amazon counter part appeared to be of higher quality, having worked at a controls cable manufacturing facility. I put troy-bilt.com cable on the tractor and it only lasted one mow. At this point I have had 3 cables break: the original cable on the tractor, the amazon part, and the troy-bilt.com part.

It would appear something else on the deck is broken or worn out, putting additional strain on the control cable. Having 3 cables break in a short period of time would indicate something else is broken. There's absolutely no difference between the $12.99 amazon part and the $30.00 troy-bilt.com part.

The only noticeable difference between the two cables is one is made in Mexico while the other is made in Asia.

What I suspect Was Actually Breaking The Cable

I purchased a rebuild kit, and was planning to rebuild the deck just like I did on my poulan, however they sent me the wrong sized spindle towers and the wrong idler pulley. I pulled the deck off the tractor and noticed the blade was rubbing against the deck. I had new blades to put on and had to actually grind the new blade back about an 1/8 inch.

Possibly the deck itself is warped from having hit stumps / clumps of dirt in the yard. Here is a photo of how much I had to grind off the end of the blade. I have had to do this in the past on other lawn tractors.