Mowing Mower Deck rear wheels

[duane]

I'm curious why manuf.'s use a fixed straight line wheel on the rear of mower decks. PT uses casters on the front which are great, but the straight line rear wheels dig into soft turf and flower beds while turning. My Toro mower deck is the same way. Why not use caster wheels on the rear as well to prevent from digging in?

Duane

[marrt]

Duane,

I think it’s to keep the mower from “creeping” down hill when mowing around a slope. For example, if you are mowing side to side on a hill, the mower would try to turn downhill if the rear wheels were not straight. That’s my guess anyway.

With regard to the PT rear wheels, I want to replace them if possible. The stock wheels are 8”x 2” hard plastic wheels. I would like to replace them with 8” x 3” rubber wheels with a grease zerk. Haven’t found any yet though.

[MossRoad]

If its any consolation, mine will do the same thing as yours in moist soil. However, rigth now, with no significant rain in 6 weeks, the ground is hard as a rock and it doesn't dig in [img]/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif[/img]

There was mention of wider tires with rounded edges that were supposed to help this problem. And as far as digging into flower beds, I've just started using them as a built in edger and it works pretty good at pushing the mulch back each time I mow. Turned lemons into lemonade on this one [img]/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif[/img]