Mower Deck Gauge Wheels and grease

[Jeff H]

Anybody out there believe in not greasing specifically the mower deck gauge wheels, on the theory that the grease and dirt make a nice grinding paste.

I took the wheels off the shafts for the first time on my RCK54P-23BX deck and was surprised at the wear on the steel axle shafts. I thought the plastic bushings would take all the wear.

I see the less expensive aftermarket wheels do not have grease fittings and from the pictures do not even appear to have the plastic bushings, it looks like the 5/8" hole is directly in the wheel.

Wondering how the aftermarket wheels on a de-greased cleaned axle with maybe a bit of dry graphite powder upon assembly would fair?

 

[ryan08]

That is sort of my thought as well. Those wheels don't fit that tight and dirt is going to get in and mix with the grease and well.....you know the rest. I have never shot mine with goo yet going on 5 years.

 

[Jeff H]

Thanks Ryan
I have the axles cleaned up and the new wheels should be here before the weekend. I am still thinking about assembling with just powder graphite.

 

[Grateful11]

Well I know a guy that supposedly done nothing to the gauge wheels on his X540 and had to replace all the spindles on his mower deck. The plastic wheels wore as much as 2/3rds of the way through the steel spindle but who knows whether it was due to no lube or powdery dirt that did the damage. The steel spindles were in much worse shape than the hole in the gauge wheels.

 

[Toolguy]

When you grease the spindles it blocks most of the dirt from getting in. It also pushes the old grease and dirt to the outside. Grease is good.

 

[Grateful11]

Our X720 has close 300 hours on it and I grease the deck wheels about twice a season and there's no excessive wear yet. My wife mows in much less than desirable conditions around the farm, no manicured lawn here. Those deck spindles are expensive. You can get aftermarket gage wheels, ours still has the originals. They're set about an 3/4- 1" above the ground on a level surface.

 

[Jeff H]

Well I figure they not the front wheels on a bonneville salt flats race car, so this time around I am not going to use grease on the wheels.

I got my new Oregon Products replacement wheels and sprayed the cleaned up wheel axles with two coats of dry graphite lubricant and let it dry before assembling them. Blaster - Graphite Dry Lube I will see how that works out.

To all the TBN'ers that grease the wheels every time you mow I tip my hat to your attention to detail and I would agree that probably works great. But for those of us that don't grease as much, it looked like the grease and dirt mixture was wearing more metal than plastic.

 

[Jeff H]

I took the wheels apart today to see how they held up during the 2016 mowing season with only the dry graphite spray. They were still spinning just fine, once I pulled the shafts out all was well. I cleaned off the shafts and resprayed them with the graphite dry lubricant and reassembled them. I am going to stick with this method for now.

 

[SandburRanch]

The dirt is there whether greased or not. So the question you have to answer for yourself is, would the shaft be better off with dry dirt or lubricated dirt. My mower wheels never touch the ground so it makes me no difference, but if they did I would prefer lubed dirt.

 

[Kentuckyfarmer]

OEM gauge wheels are most likely glass fiber reinforced or something is the reason they are wearing the steel shafts out. That's the reason for grease fitting in them to have a layer of lub between the steel shaft and the wheel. I grease every time before each mowing. Sometimes I even shoot a little more half way thru the mowing. It takes about 4 hours for me to mow everything.