"Dr. Doctor" wrote in
:


to chip
I heard the when Dana bought foote the tooling / molds were
lost/destroyed and that is the reason why parts for foote are hard to
find.. I always wondered if I was told a line so that person could
pass on doing their job.... did you hear anything like that???




Actually, the reason Foote trannies were so hard to find for a while is
that there was a major fire in their manufacturing plant. Although they
always had parts available, their production lines were down for about a
year. But he may not have a Foote. He specifically stated he had a YTV-16.
This is a VARIDRIVE tractor, and most of them had two forward / one reverse
gear transaxles that were actually made by Roper, who was made most of
Sears tractors (and the descendent company still does).

Roper Corp. was bought in 1988 by General Electric in a bidding war with
Whirlpool. (Ironic, since Whirlpool was once RCA-Whirlpool, and RCA was
once and is again GE.) After the dust settled, they sold the lawn and
garden equipment business to A.B. Electrolux of Sweden, makers of White-
Westinghouse, Frigidaire, Husqvarna, Poulan, Weed Eater and many other
brands. G.E. sold the Roper name rights to Whirlpool. They basically kept
the gas kitchen ranges and range patents, maybe the industrial pumps, and
looted the rest to pay the bill from the bidding war. (They paid over twice
the per share value at the start.)

The lawn and garden division became American Yard Products, then Frigidaire
Home Products, and now Electrolux Home Products, all just new names from
Sweden for the same old dog. Any dealer handling mower repairs for mass
merchant machines should be able to order parts to repair this tranny. But
a complete unit is probably not going to be found. Those Roper vari-drives
were built well before the A.B.Electrolux take over, and are well beyond
the average 10 year life span of mass merchandiser power equipment.

Matt