Modifying a mower deck?

I have a Craftsman garden tractor we use to mow our tree fields...the "grass" tends to have a lot of tall weeds and we don't mow it as often as we do the lawn. The weeds bend and then spring back up.

I'm at the point where I'm ready to modify the deck to get the most bush-hog like performance out of it...I looked at the meg-mo blades, but not ready to drop that much coin into them - yet.

I bought new high lift blades, 2 new belts, and am going to get it adjusted as high as i can... the meg-mo guy said it would be best to lower the blades even with the bottom of the deck, but with the star center hole, that would require some thought (not as easy as adding washers). My thought is to cut the front of the deck up about an inch and not quite the whole width. I think the weeds won't bend so far and have a better chance of actually getting cut.

I realize this weakens the front of the deck, but i'm not sure it will matter much...the integrity of the entire deck should be fine. Since this is just for this purpose (we have a NH to mow the actual lawn), i'm ok with modifying it if it will work better.

any thoughts on this or other ideas?

That sounds like a perty good idea actually especialy for the really tough weeds , I have one also that I use to mow around the edge of our pond with and had been trying to think of a way to midify it . Mine is the green model so not sure if its like yours or not but the front of the deck appears to be really strong so I dont think it would weaken it much at all , where you are talking about doing it I done think it would be much of a safety issue either .

I'll let you experiment first though .

If in doubt about the strength of the deck, some 1/2X1/2X1/8 angle iron can laid on top of the front of the deck and tack welded in a few places. That should stiffen 'er up for ya, but not cause any clearance issues with the deck and the tractor.

mine is the GT3000 - nice tractor but the deck has always been crappy...i've already cut huge chunks out of the discharge side and cut about half of the shield away to keep it from clogging up so bad (neighbor has the more expensive Husqvarna model and it does the same thing)

I'm thinking i can just make a few vertical cuts and bend the lip up...worst case is bend them back down and weld it back.

unless i talk myself out of it tonight, i may just break out the saw tomorrow.

spiffywebcreations said:

mine is the GT3000 - nice tractor but the deck has always been crappy...i've already cut huge chunks out of the discharge side and cut about half of the shield away to keep it from clogging up so bad (neighbor has the more expensive Husqvarna model and it does the same thing)

I'm thinking i can just make a few vertical cuts and bend the lip up...worst case is bend them back down and weld it back.

unless i talk myself out of it tonight, i may just break out the saw tomorrow.

Click to expand...

Dont forget to take pics if you can .

I have a tow behind my fourwheeler brush hog, and it is open in the front, with chain hanging down a few inches all along the front to slow anything that might get thrown out.

Cutting your front of the deck is doable, but you need to put a piece angle iron ontop to keep it strong and so it won't flex.

Good luck!

Once you cut away the deck you lose the lift of the blades a lot. They can't create the vacuum when they spin and may cut the weeds better but you will lose some of the lift for grasses.

I have this old Kut-Quick..that has flaps on all sides of the deck..that can be flipped up .. http://s40.photobucket.com/albums/e225/BRGT/?action=view&current=IM000202.jpg Maybe if you cut the deck ..you could scrounge up some heavy-duty piano hinge and tack the pieces back in place..the hinge should add strength back to the deck..just a thought..

this thing never had much lift to begin with - again, just a crappy design...and this isn't lawn, just needs to knock the weeds down. the one field has more grass but the second field is mostly weedy type stuff

i'm not really cutting enough off to be worried about the deck flexing...

i'll get some pics fersure

well, i hacked it up today...I wouldn't call it great but its a marked improvement over what it was before. I didn't do the center section, since thats where it attaches to the tractor - wanted to keep that pretty rigid...didn't seem to impact the cut either way.

deck marked, pre-cutting:


deck cut and bent left side:


right side marked:


showing the gap between the blade and deck edge, about 1/2 - 3/4":


tree row before, weeds 3-4 feet tall:


tree row after still some popup, grass was a little wet, still not bad. the 3 blade design suffers when the grass is tall, it has to push the cut stuff to the right across all 3 blades:

Looks like it worked perty good, thanks for sharing the pics I might just give that a try on mine.

Cool!