Last week my son and his friend were riding around on our mule, and the next thing you know they came walking back to the house. Never a good thing! My son and his friend are both autistic, so sometimes it's difficult to get information from them clearly. I'll fill you in on everything I know and hopefully that will give some clues as to the problem.


First, I had been driving the mule through a muddy area in our woods. I had both 4wd and diff lock engaged. I had made a big bonfire for the boys, so I pulled up nearby and joined them. After a while they asked to go for a ride, so I let them take it out. I didn't even think about having left it in 4wd and diff lock. In any case, they go riding on our paved driveway back and forth a couple of times (it's about 1/4 mile long), and it was after about 15 minutes of not seeing them that they came walking in. The boys told me the mule wouldn't run, so I walked up and the mule cranked right up. I thought I had solved their problem until I went to put it in gear--nothing. I tried pushing it up into high, but it wouldn't pop into gear. Same with low and reverse. After several tries it finally popped into one of the gears (can't remember which one) but wouldn't move. I had a time getting it back into neutral so I could let it roll to the bottom of the hill closer to our house.


I tried to extract more information, and it seems my son was trying to drive over a stump and wasn't successful. His friend said there was a lot of smoke. I could definitely smell something hot, but it was an unfamiliar smell. The mule is a 2005 model, and the drive belt has never been changed. I do wonder if perhaps he burned the belt up, but would that affect its ability to shift into gear? Or did the transmission get damaged and that cause the belt to smoke? In any case, they drove it about 200 feet from where he was trying to drive over the stump, so something worked for a least a bit of time. I thought about removing the plastic cover to look at the belt, but if it seems like the transmission is the issue I may as well just load it up and take it somewhere for repair.


Thank you in advance for any advice you can send my way!