Think I found my mower deck problem, or at least one of them...

When I mowed with a 216 i left the shield off

Yes that’ll do it , hope that fixes it.
I just happen to have another deck should you need one. Hahaha!!
Good luck

That seemed to do the trick! Much nicer to only have to go over everything once and in 2nd gear instead of 1st!

Unfortunately I found a number of other stress failures in the deck with the cover off along with signs of previous repairs.

Does anyone have experience pulling the main sheave off of one of these decks? I need to put a new bearing in the donor deck main sheave. Parts diagram shows the bearing assembly with a shaft and a roll pin on the lower side. Looking at the sheave itself it looks as if I would need to cut the rivets out (as suggested in my other thread) to change the bearing. If I can figure out how to do it I might just move the sheave from my running deck to the donor deck as the shell on that appears to have less stress issues.