I Cracked My Murray Mandrel/Spindal 

Jeremy, I am the imaginary guy you made this video for, the guy with a 20-year-old Murray and a broken mandrel. I bought my Murray riding mower in 2003, broke the mandrel in 2023. I had finally decided it was time to put this mower out to pasture... until I saw that a replacement was likely to cost me upwards of $2500! I did a fair amount of research, including watching your video, and decided it was worth the modest-ish investment to see if I could resurrect my mower and keep her running awhile longer. I'm grateful to you for doing this video, for what you knew was likely to be a limited audience (me, it turns out). The same things you wondered about saved me from wondering about them, and the things you encountered prepared me for the repair. The comment from Arthur Cuda above likely helped make my repair easier by going ahead and pulling out the deck (thanks, AC). I finally got my parts in hand and put her back together yesterday, then rode around cutting a test patch. Everything's looking good! In mid-2023, a new mandrel for my model (405000x8a) cost me ~$100, two new blades were $30, and I had recently replaced the drive belt (pre-broken-mandrel) for about $25. I even bought a little mini grease gun from Harbor Freight for, I don't know, $15 or something. My goal is to see if I can get another year out of her; we'll see. (I suppose it might help if I stopped acting as though it's my actual goal to destroy the mower every time I take her out... maybe she's earned some babying after 20 years of solid service!) Thanks again, dude.

You should consider removing the deck when performing this task. The deck is very easy to remove and reinstall. With the deck off changing the mandrels is much easier. The mandris always come without threads.