(ET) Mower stuff

["Dean A. Stuckmann" <dstuck lakefield net>]

Hi,
Couple of things that I have seen with Et decks (all rear discharge) I've
collected and used over the last 20+ years.

1) All original ET blades are quite thin (.125") in cross section. However
the factory replacement from Wheel Horse was .163". I think the thin blades
use less power.
2) They are about 14.25 to 14.375 in length (straight measurement)
3) The front mount deck blades have about an .5" offset and the one belly
deck I have from a New Idea had blades with a minimal offset, .1" max.
4) I don't get uncut strips between blades except during some corners.
5) The decks are not strong enough where the mount arms bolt to the deck.
Weld some channel and/or angle iron to the deck and bolt or weld that "U"
bracket to the re-enforcement before you distort and crack the deck from
years of use.
6) The standard front bracket that is suppose to guide the deck is quite
useless if you drive in or out of ditches or other areas of sudden 
elevation
changes. The mower arms can get under the bracket and you end up with the
whole weight of the front of the tractor on the deck. To fix this problem I
welded a vertical bar 2" wide and 6" high to the side of arm at the area of
the front bracket. That way the bar will still be against the bracket even
when the deck arm are well below the bracket.

I've used my 1970 E15 with its deck for 20 years and in my case, the deck
worked better with baffles than without (after a modification). When I ran
it without baffles, grass would lump up at the right side of the deck. When
I used it with baffles I got lumps all over but then I added some "fingers"
to lift up the rubber flap a bit so the grass could shoot out, rather than
falling in front of the rollers, and then it worked great. I think the
baffles help the blades generate suction to lift the grass.

I just started using an E16 (1974?) with what I believe is it's original
baffled deck. This deck has stamped steel caster supports, where the '70 
has
cast aluminum. The '70 deck also has a wood roller on the nose at the 
middle
mower which I'm going to add to the '74 deck to prevent it from catching on
rough ground. Anyway, that one leaves lumps all over too, so I'll be adding
the fingers to that flap in the near future.

One more thing. Badly worn blades do not lift the grass as well and are
"shorter" so this may be a cause of strips between blades.  Now before
people tell me I'm nuts about them being shorter, let me explain. The sweep
of the blade is what does the cutting diameter, as was noted in a previous
posting. The sweep of the blade is the diagonal measurement between the
sharp corners of the cutting tips. As the blade wears and is reground the
sweep gets less and less up to the point of measured length equals swept
length if the blades are ground half way back. Think of spinning a square 
vs
a narrow bar of the same length. The corners of the square sweep out a much
larger diameter than the narrow bar.

Hope this stuff helps
Dean A. Stuckmann