Anyone ever added additional anti-scalp wheels/rollers to your mower deck?

[Jack Vines]

My favorite lawn tractor, the Cub Cadet 2135, had four wheels on the 38" mower deck, one at each corner, as well as a wide roller on the front. Since plastic wheels are a one dollar item to manufacturers, wonder why all decks don't have that many wheels?

The new Toro Zero Turn TimeCutter 42" deck has only two wheels, at the front corners. The Toro does a very good job and during mid-to-late summer, I cut at 3.5", so then scalping is only a problem on a very few hills and dips.

During the spring and early summer, the lawn grows faster, so I usually cut it at 3". Does anyone think adding two rear wheels and a front roller (maybe even a roller in the rear also?) would give a more even cut on a lawn with many waves and hills?

jack vines

 

[mddorange]

I am with you as my deck has the 4 wheels and I have noticed that most decks now only have 2. Do you have your own welder or are you going to brad them on?

 

[franklin2]

You need to study the design of the deck and the way it's supported. There are many ways they do it.

Some decks are dropped to the ground, and the tractor just tows the mower along. These are usually the mowers with 4 wheels and lots of rollers. And their height are adjusted by adjusting the mower wheels.

Some decks only have wheels and rollers on the front, because the rear of the deck is supported by the tractor. So the deck will follow the ground with the wheels on front of the deck, and the tires on the back of the tractor. If this type of deck had rollers on the back, they would be anti-scalping wheels, the front would have support wheels.

Some decks are supported on all 4 corners by the tractor, and may have just a few wheels here and there not for support, but for anti-scalping purposes. This type of wheel is always a inch or so above the ground while cutting.

I mention this because when I first bought my Kubota F2000, I had terrible problems with it scalping and the cut was terrible. I finally figured out in this design, the front of the deck had support wheels, the rear of the deck was supposed to be supported by the tractor. When I first bought it someone had dropped the adjustments all the way to the ground and was using the rear anti-scalp rollers as support wheels. It also made the tractor very easy to get stuck on a hill. Once I figured it out and raised the back of the deck back up, that put weight on the tractor tires and it hd a lot more traction and also supported the deck properly, giving a much better cut and no more digging into the ground.

 

[Jack Vines]

Some decks are supported on all 4 corners by the tractor, and may have just a few wheels here and there not for support, but for anti-scalping purposes. This type of wheel is always a inch or so above the ground while cutting.

I'd say most mowers. Every smaller rider I've owned had the deck supported by the frame front and rear.

On both the Cub 2135 and the Toro SS4235, the operator's instructions state the wheels should not touch the ground on the level. They're there to help the deck follow the contour of uneven lawns. A John Deere deck I looked at recently also had the five anti-scalpers.

jack vines

 

[franklin2]

The mower that left the best cut I have ever used was a cub cadet 3240 like the picture below.

You can see it has large casters on the front, and they are set with the brackets and washers to run on the ground all the time. The rear of the deck has at least 3 or 4 wide plastic rollers that go all the way across the deck and there is one higher wide roller in the middle front of the deck. You set the caster height and wheel height to the cut height you want, we always set it on "3". If you want to cut higher of course you could raise the deck to a higher cut number, but you could never go below 3 because that is were we set the caster height on the deck.