Need help with mower deck on GT 52XLS

[namesray]

I aquired a slightly used husqvarna gt 52xls with 52 in heavy duty fab deck. The tractor is ok, but the deck and cut quality is terrible!!!! It will mow fine for about 15min then starts to clog up under deck, especially between the edging blade and middle blade. From there on, it leaves about a 2in strip until the deck continues to clog underneath and all the grass suddenly drops all the grass and stalls the entire mower, engine and all.

The deck has the normal high vac blades and side discharge, and there is no mulching plate, so it is a clear path for it to discharge the clippings.

I have played around with the deck level, setting the deck every which way, higher in front, higher in back, and level front to back. (The book actually says to have the front of the deck about a half an inch LOWER then the rear of the deck. That is how I have it now and it still clogs up, leaves streaks, and stalls out.

The grass I am cutting is not too high, as it is what anybody would cut their lawn like. I have run a lot of mowers. This one is terrible.

My thoughts are that for some reason the blades or design of deck is creating too much "up" in its vacuum and not flowing the grass from one blade to next and out the chute. (I have even messed with setting the blades in certain order to aide in this, but still the same poor results). The reason I think there is way too much vacuum is that once the deck starts to clog, if I throttle all the way down, the deck starts to clean itself out, but I have to sit there for 5 minutes and then it cuts ok for a short while.

I am at my wits end with this thing, and am looking for some help. Would different blades help? Cut somethings out from under the deck? Or is this a common issue with husqvarna heavy duty fab decks? Please help me solve this one. The tractor is nice, but the cut quality is junk. I would like to set fire to the thing. Please help.

 

[Fawken]

Sounds like someone put mulching blades on it. Get straight blades and try it.

 

[namesray]

The blades on it are the orginals. Mower only had 43 hours on it when I got it. They are solid backs with a curl up. Aren't mulching blades serrated along the backs? At any rate, the blades on it now look very simular, if not same, as the ones on my simplicity zero turn, and that simplicity cuts great. Maybe the serrated blades might help my situation?? Would they creat less vacuum up force??

 

[Fawken]

Not sure. Obviously the more straight the blade the less it acts as a propeller.

 

[Spindifferent]

Check to make sure the mower belt is tight so that you are getting max power to the blades. Replace belt if worn.

Lube the pulley mandrels.

Try mowing at different cut heights to see if the height makes any difference.

Replace the blades with new high lift blades.

 

[Gem99ultra]

I too, have a GTH52 with the fab deck... and see a similar problem on occasion. What I've done is to sharpen the blades and cut lower. The lower the cut the smoother. Run at high speed, as the book recommends. I do have the mulching kit on mine, and the blades are mulching blades. And recent new belts also helped. Manual calls for new belts at 100 hours, but I replaced both of mine at 90 hours, and did see a major improvement. Using it as a tow truck probably didn't help the belt life

On the other hand, this horse-of-a-mower is really intended for heavy rough cutting. It doesn't come close to fine, smooth cutting like my Rider 155 with the Bio-Clip deck. It will simply walk through high weeds, brush, sticks, you-name-it, but it will not be much smoother than a brush hog on work like that. A second pass cleans up the cut, but first pass will leave a rough cut and an occasional miss.

With cutting in areas like I have, i.e. 1/2" sticks, rocks, rough ground, vines, wisteria roots, etc., a stamped deck would already have been beat to pieces. So, there's good things about the heavy duty fab deck, and drawbacks.

 

[tk tom]

The cut quality isn't going to be fantastic with that type of deck. It is very important to keep very sharp blades on these machines, that will help a lot in keeping it from clogging. Another thing you can do is grind out the front baffle in the deck, that helped some on mine. There was a TSB on that at some point I believe. Dry mowing is awesome with these, wet is definitely more difficult. I put on approx. 60 hours mowing last year in my yard, and for reference I wore out a set of blades completely (aftermarket) and about half wore out the OEM blades. When I started grinding them more frequently, my clogging problems got much better. Slowing down the mowing speed helped a little, but not as much as I'd hoped.

 

[namesray]

Thanks for the experiences guys. I have since bought and put on serrated back blades and mowed 2 lawns with it and so far good results.

I checked under deck after and it was starting to fill each blade port shut, but no where near as bad as before.

The blades I took off looked fine as far as sharpness, and no way am I going to sharpen them after every mowing or 2.

I feel the old blades were creating too much lift/vacuum and thus not discharging the grass out, but rather just pasting it to the top of the underside of the deck. I actually think blades with less curl on the back would be even better.

I will check the belts and see if they are in good condition. Thanks. I didn't think of thatone.

The tractor itself is pretty nice, but over all, I am disappointed in the cut quality of the husqvarna heavy duty fabricated decks. I think a stamped deck might have had better cut quality.

It is real funny how different decks/blade combinations can create so different cutting outcomes. My mtd mower cut beautiful. 42"stamped deck and hardly ever clogged. My kubota b3200 60" mid mower cut great, threw grass clippings out 4inches long and never ever clogged. My now simplicity champion zero turn cuts great and might start to clog up after 7 to 10 lawns, but would not leave streaks, or stall mower out like this husqvarna does.

Hopefully these serrated back blades continue to do the trick. I have 3 lawns to mow wednesday and I will report back with the results.

 

[peter3759]

Got rid of my 52xls after 2 summers and 50 hours for the same reason! Went to the mz52 zero turn hoping the higher blade tip speed would help the mowing, but i honestly believe the welded decks from Husqvarna are just a poor design! Lawn better be dry as a bone and not very long or your screwed! Sucks when you pay 5k for a lawn mower and you have to mow like it's a craftsmen! The zero turn did significantly reduce mowing time so I'm happy with that!

 

[namesray]

I agree that husqvarna welded decks are junk. The serreat back blades I put on have helped extent the time it takes to clog the deck, so I can mow 5 lawns instead of clogging in half an hour, but it still clogged off. At least it is not clogging so bad and dropping all the grass at once stalling the engine anymore.

I plan on cutting pieces of metal out from bottom of deck to open it up more. There is not much space between the edging deck blade port and the center blade port. If I cut some metal out it will greatly give it more room to feed grass clippings to center blade. The metal pieces are to help wit vacuum so I think I be ok with cutting some of it out. I will keep an eye out for cracks in the deck, but I think I will be fine.

Too bad husqvarna put a crappy deck design on a nice tractor.

Any body know if their 52in stamped decks do better?