To me there's no reason that you shouldn't have zerks on the hinges of mowers like that. Zerks could be installed in a position to where they're not going to be knocked around that much and I think it would work great it just be time-consuming to drill that many jerks in.
If we're taking votes, I agree with you. Especially since that mower has zerks everywhere. I kid you not, there are 2 zerks on EACH altitude adjustment for the wings. One on each side of it. That's an adjustment that most owners will make once and never again unless you change tractors (drawbar height). 2 zerks for something that will probably never move more than once. And 0 zerks on something that moves constantly when the mower is in use. Because those hinges aren't just up and down, they move when the contour of the ground changes. Basically, if you watch the mower, unless it's DEAD flat land, those hinges/joints are in motion constantly, and with quite a bit of force on them too. They are also really "open" joints (because it's basically a piano hinge) with LOTS of places for water to get in. Nahh, no zerks in that though, even though, outside of the wheels and spindles, there's probably nothing on the mower that gets more "action" than those hinges. Brilliant I tell you, brilliant. And, not isolated to just me, I've read a few threads with "sized hinges", including one where the guy had to take a demo saw to the mower and basically start over!
Anyway, engineering snafu aside, I wanted to report back. I put a 1" stroke control on each wing. That's the end of that problem. Now the deck maxes out around 75 degrees or so (instead of 90 to the middle deck) but the deck goes up and down like a dream. The weight pulls it down easily once it's pulled a bit in that direction. Or course, I can't lock the deck up with them in place (but I never need to, this thing never sees the road, just my farm) and, it's a bit wider (probably 8' total width instead of the ~6ft it is with both wings fully folded). Still a heck of a lot less than the 12 it is all the way down, and "small enough" for the places I need to get it into where the 12' is too much to go through (gates, between trees, etc).
I'm probably still gonna drill it, but I'm going to wait until the winter, this is good enough and it's too hot out there to be fussing with that thing anymore. I'll keep dripping oil in after a mow and working it back and forth; but it seems it's 90% fixed right now. Might be 100% fixed if I mow enough with it like this and that oil I'm dripping on it works it way further into the joint.
Really stupid design. And that's disappointing because everything else on this mower is just so well thought out. It's an obvious weak point though, and one that owners should be aware of. I suspect if you shoot oil in there from day 1, or, if you drill it when you get it, you'll never have this problem. It's stuff like that that makes you wonder, how on earth did nobody catch this when they were designing in? I know, we'll run a 4 ft hinge that's open to the elements out of mild steel with 10 joints on each side. Grease fittings? Pfft.. Who needs that??
