Are mower deck wheels necessary?

[CJBOTA]

I have a b2620 with 150 hours on it and all of the anti scalp wheels have fallen off of the mower deck. The front two broke clean at the joint. (poorly welded joint) the back ones gave up because the bracket material thickness is less the 1/16" thick. I bought a $14000 lawn mower hoping I would get something that was heavy duty. I am happy with the tractor, but I feel the mower deck is a piece of crap.
Anyway my question is, are the wheels really needed? If so I am going to fabricate heavier brackets but that is going to be a lot of work. My dealer isn't interested in helping me, "they have never experienced this problem before" .They are really nice people so I really don't want to fight with them, I just want to fix my deck. I figure the Japanese (Kubota) are a little like Germans if you try to tell them there is something flawed with their design. What is funny about this is I mowed the same grass with a cub cadet 3205 for 10 years and never broke a wheel.
Your opinions on the necessessity of the wheels would be appreciated, thanks!
Cj

[Turbys_1700]

Personally if I was in your shoes I would try to find a way to beef up those brackets and put the wheels back on...
I have not hear of the happening to anyone else on here...
Perhaps someone else with this issue will pop in to give advice...
Kubota makes very good tractors and implements...
I find this somewhat uncharacteristic of their quality...

[JOHNTHOMAS]

You could leave the wheels off and weld 1/2" steel plates where the wheels are now located. That way they should operate like little grader blades and level the dirt/yard down where with wheels the deck would just lift up and down with the contour of your yard.
I've never had a Cub Cadet before to compare decks but I have had several Kubota decks and have actually used several of them to push stuff and level out high spots of dirt and never had a problem with their not being rather heavy duty.
I did have a RFM (Jolliee brand?) made in France at one time and it kept falling apart. I gave it back to the dealer and got a Landpride deck that was built like a tank and was almost as heavy, never broke it. The cheap one was $1200 and the Landpride was $1700 so I guess for the money difference one was considerably more durable. I'm fairly rough on mowing/leveling decks was in my earlier years of trying to dominate my land. I've got most of those high spots mowed/graded down now but I'm still having trouble mowing the tops down on several big limestone rocks. My brother (next door) always tells me he heard me mowing the rocks on my lot after I finish mowing.
One other thing, some decks use their wheels to only touch the ground when there is a high spot to keep from grading instead of mowing. My F model Kubotas have the deck out front with bigger heavy duty wheels that ride on the ground all the time unless I lift the deck up on purpose.

[CJBOTA]

Turby,
I also own a Mx5100 with a backhoe and I agree that normally things seem well built. I had the platform on a bx2350 break in half a few years ago but Kubota did fix that under warranty. My wife was using the mower when the first one came off so I just figured she hit something. After I yelled at her about a week later i was mowing and the other one fell off. When I looked at the weld joint I was shocked to see there was no fusion whatsoever between the deck and the bracket. The joint looked like a piece of bubble gum was connecting the two parts. Correctly welded joints should be as strong as the parent materials. In other words it should not break clean, it should be like torn apart. The worst part about the front ones falling off was the fact they went under the deck and damaged the mower blades.

[CJBOTA]

Johnthomas,
I am glad you weighed in on this post because I know you have experienced a lot of different equipment. You are right about using the deck as a dozer as I have done the same thing. So I was wrong to imply the entire deck is a piece of crap. Just the anti scalp wheel brackets or the welding of them is crap. I like your idea of skids vs wheels, that's what they put on my king kutter tiller.

[ray66v]

I was wrong to imply the entire deck is a piece of crap.

Okay. But when you said, "the mower deck is a piece of crap", you cannot later refer to it as only being implied.

I understand your frustration.

[beckmurph]

CJBOTA
I can't understand why your selling dealer would not help you on this. Your deck should be covered under warranty.

[RobertBrown]

How long have you been using this deck? A friend of mine has a similiar Kubota deck and it rusted through in several places but that was after 10 years of heavy use.

Anyway my question is, are the wheels really needed?

I think the fact that they broke off means you need them. Were the wheels smaller than the ones on the cadet?

[CJBOTA]

Ok, I stand corrected, I was wrong to say the whole mower deck is a piece of crap, just part of it is a piece of crap. I just bought the mower this spring, so it is not a year old yet. We do mow a lot. We do three yards that add up to almost 20 acres. I now kind of wish I would have bought one of those F series like johnthomas had for a while. Maybe I will go that direction next year. The reason I went with the b2620 was so I had a smaller tractor to maintain our 1 acre strawberry patch. It fits between the rows much better then the mx5100. I guess the reason my dealer won't warrant it is because I am the only one that ever experienced this problem. I really don't think that is a good reason, but like I said they are good people so I really don't want to argue with them. I am going to try it for awhile without the wheels to see how it goes. The cub cadet deck was a different design. It was not suspended, the wheels supported the deck. I still have the cub but it is only a 48" deck.

[arjaysmithjr]

Sorry to hear this, as I'm in the market for a new mower.
I have a Simplicity Regent and about 3 acres of flat grass,
but with holes EVERYWHERE. The wheels kept falling into
holes and breaking the first year, and the next year the
wheels, brackets and all, started breaking off the deck.
I got fed up rewelding them and made adjustable spring
hangars for the two front wheels and hung the deck from
the frame. Works remarkably well (I adjusted the height
right where I wanted it).
So the answer to the original question is, No you do NOT
need wheels on your mower deck.