Brown spots in grass after I mow.

[xtn]

How close to the ground are the mufflers on these offending machines?

 

[RG1]

How close to the ground are the mufflers on these offending machines?

8- 10" or so. The muffler gets very hot, and it doesn't take long to brown out the grass.

There are a lot of posts about this over on Lawnsite if you want to do some reading.

 

[Texasmark]

Ditto on the muffler when you stop on the grass. My ZTs have fabricated mufflers at the rear which are high and I have no problems with them. My conventional mowers have the muffler close to the ground up front of the axle, like just a few inches, and even though there is a sheet metal heat shield under the muffler, it will still burn the grass.....and it doesn't take but a couple of minutes.

HTH,
Mark

 

[james68]

When I first started experiencing this problem, I wondered what the heck was going on. Then, after checking the machine out for problems, I noticed that the spots always showed up in pairs, and spaced exactly the same distance apart. As soon as I realized this, I also noticed that it happened anywhere that I had stopped the machine for any reason or amount of time, like stopping to get off, open a gate, and then proceed. By the time I was coming back out through the gate(s), there would be brown spots forming. Suddenly it all made sense- the heat coming off each end of my muffler was doing it. The main body of the muffler was shielded, but the ends were not, and that's exactly where the spots would form, and the damage was done in less than 15 seconds most of the time. I have heard from other LCO's who get the same thing from their hot hydro's.

Samething, who would've ever known either of these 2 things would be causing damage to the grass. I've worked so hard on getting my zoysia back from all the drought and weeds just to cause damage by mowing with my ztr. I dint recall that on any costumer yards. It's still weird to me. Only my Yard. I never stopped on it. So Russia weird to. It's gonna take some thinking to resolve this issue. If I do I'll post it.

 

[kozal01]

Yup, as others have said it’s likely heat burns from where you stopped the mower for an extended period of time. My neighbor and I figured that out when we noticed his Cub Cadet ZTR left brown spots in his lawn just as you describe. In his case it was two spots right next to each other which happened to line up with the spacing of his hydro motors. They get pretty hot and on some units with smaller tires they are just a couple inches above the grass. My Exmark doesn’t do that but it sits a bit higher than his and my exhaust sits higher.

 

[steve tym]

My Husqvarna does this also. Took me a while to figure it out. Wouldn't you think all these companies dedicated to nice lawns would figure out how to resolve this?

 

[RjCorazza]

Interesting. I wouldn't expect the hydro motors to put off enough heat to damage grass, or even radiant heat from a reasonably placed muffler.
My tractor will kill the grass from the exhaust, but only from long term stationary use with the pto generator. Kind of drifting off the grass aspect, last year I installed fabricated heat shields on my diesel zero turn mowers, because I finally figured out the exhaust manifold heat was cooking my starter solenoids. No problems since!

 

[Gordon Gould]

Looking at the title of your thread I thought "that man needs a less scary mower"

gg

 

[steve tym]

Looking at the title of your thread I thought "that man needs a less scary mower"

gg

He said "in the grass" , not "in my shorts"

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

Wow, never heard of this. I stop all the time with my Hustler X One, and never had any spots appear. Between the fan on the motor and on each hydro unit, there isn't much of chance of heat buildup. Sounds like Hustler knows how to build a mower