Deck Survival Stories?

[wfopete 15]

When I was with Wheel Horse/Toro we would have regular meetings (like any big company) on product design & upgrade status. Often we would review various

[nylyon-(Admin) 7,880]

In my opinion, having a liner made of a teflon type material which could be adheared to the underside of the deck would be the ultimate surface. For the most part, my 42" RD deck has had the recycler part installed. As you would imagine, the underside of the deck (with recycler off) is near perfect. On to your question:

See this post where the topic was discussed.

[Raider12 13]

I have never played with having my deck coating with the bed liner material, but when I last went through my mower deck (6yrs ago) I blasted it pure white (super clean) and had it powder coated. So far it has held up quite well. :scratchead:

[qd-16 14]

Earlier this summer I painted the underside of one of my decks with POR-15. I'm waiting till this fall when I take off the deck to inspect and see how it is holding up.

I've tried the graphite based slip-plate paint before and wasn't all that impressed.

A friend of my had a deck coated with rhino lining. He said for the money that it cost to have done it wasn't worth it. It chipped off and grass stuck to it. :scratchead:

[Duff 206]

Crude, but so far very effective, I wire brushed the underside of my deck when I first got it (used, but solid) and painted it with....bar and chain oil! I do this at the beginning and end of each season and wash the underside of the deck with my garden hose (we have great water pressure) with the blades spinning after each mowing. So far the underside of the deck is remaining very clean and no rust seems to be forming. Just one man's experience.....

Duff

[can whlvr 994]

I used epoxy that i bought for my boat,it works great but i will clean,etch and recoat this winter,i like the epoxy because there isno smell to it so i can do it in the basement in the winter and put a few coats on,i havetried everything and this is holding up the best for me so far.

[scifi4all 6]

So far I am sold on the POR-15 Hardnose Paint! Two months and counting since the rebuild.

[wfopete 15]

Ahhhh, good 'ol POR 15. I suspected that would rise to the level of a deck paint contender. I recall POR 15 being tried on decks at the factory at one time. To my knowledge it was never pursued to the point of using it in production.

Could be cost, patent infringement, application issues or perhaps in just wasn't needed, as deck corrosion issues didn't register high enough to warrant the use.

I thought it would be kind of cool for any manufacture to offer a "Lifetime Corrosion Free" guarantee on a deck. Thought that would be a great selling point. That's probably why I didn't get rich in the marketing profession either!

Interesting thread, thanks for the feedback!

[v65animal 0]

I've had my JD LT133 since 2001, no problems at all, looks really good. I've been in Alabama since Dec 2003 as well and the Humidity level is HIGH.

I wash my deck off almost every time and keep it indoors. If the grass isn't wet, I just use the Blower to get rid of the lose dry stuff from the top around the belt.

[tarcoleo 119]

wfopete-

Re a "Lifetime Corrosion-Free Guarantee", that might be possible

if the deck pan were made of 316 stainless steel. Dream on....

the additional cost might be $100 or less. But then that would defeat the

"built-in obsolescence" philosophy, or the "make it as cheap as you can"

philosophy. "Nothing should last a lifetime" (from the Capitalism 101 textbook)

swamp yankee

[wfopete 15]

A reasonably maintained deck can and will last a long time as V65 animal points out. The trick is how many consumers really perform maintenance to even that elementary level? A SS deck pan would be awesome. Can you imagine how bright a bare SS deck would be in the sunlight? As for the "built-in obsolescence" philosophy, give a consumer anything and they will find a way to wear it out or break it. There are generally plenty of pieces that will wear out or die on the deck and tractor before the deck corrodes. All you have to do is make the warranty limited to the original buyer. Naw, don't even have to do that. Just think, a deck rusts through, you take it to the dealer for warranty, chances are it would be a

[tarcoleo 119]

Pete-

You said- "I thought it would be kind of cool for any manufacture to offer a "Lifetime Corrosion Free"

guarantee on a deck." You don't think so anymore? I was just trying to be helpful with the SS

suggestion. Actually, I like bright and shiny.

Thomas Arcoleo, retired materials engineer

[W9JAB 156]

http://www.wheelhorseforum.com/index.php?showtopic=11034

NOT BAD FOR A 43 YEAR OLD DECK, But ya don't make-em like dat anymore :hide:

[wfopete 15]

Tom, I still do think it would be cool. No slam intended on your SS deck thoughts. I wasn

[tarcoleo 119]

Oh Pete,

Don't want to drag this out after the issue is dead, BUT consider these-

1) Why would a SS deck be more difficult to clean than a painted one?

2) I have an original (my design) SS charcoal grill and cleaning is no

problem, just have to scrape out the ashes from the hearth area. The

lid is washed off in the sink when used. Design details on request.

3) Comparing a SS deck that doesn't see heat with any kind of SS grill

that sees heat and cooking grease is an "apples and oranges" argument.

4) Don't forget that Ford produced some 200 cars with SS bodies in 1937.

Then there was the De Lorean more recently. Bright and shiny is good.

Tom :scratchead:

[linen beige 15]

4) Don't forget that Ford produced some 200 cars with SS bodies in 1937.

Looking at the reasons why Ford only produced 200 SS bodys might answer the question as to why they aren't the norm. Production costs are MUCH higher due to the costs of the special tooling needed to shape the harder SS.

The blinding shinyness is easily answered the same way gun makers solve it. Sandblast/shotpeen/knurl/otherwise "unpolish" the top surface.

I think Coach's idea of a coating containing Teflon is more econimically feasable, but I think a liner made of Delrin (the really slick plastic model railroad couplers are made of) would work even better.

BTW, My Craftsman deck is on it's 12th season and has no more than an almost invisible amount of surface rust underneath. It is locked back up in it's storage shed within 30 seconds of it's last pass across the yard and I might scrape off some of the built up clippings a couple times a season when I sharpen the blades.

I've never had a deck with a rust problem. Maybe the very high limestone content to our soil changes the PH to a much less acidic level than most other areas?

[tarcoleo 119]

Jim-

Ford went to SS in 1937 when SS first came to market in large quantities. Recall

this was the bottom of the depression and it was only an experiment.

---

Right about playing down the bright and shiny.

---

Teflon not good. Too soft as one sees readily on the bottom of skillets. Not aware

that Delrin lends itself to being used as a coating.

---

Scraping and maintenance will extend deck life. One of my decks is 30 years

old and only now has required a simple corrosion-related repair. SS would reduce

maintenance chore.

---

High soil pH is surely a benefit you enjoy even if it makes the grass grow faster.

---

How about a carbon-fibre deck pan? YES! (kidding)

Tom :scratchead:

[linen beige 15]

Not aware

that Delrin lends itself to being used as a coating.

---

How about a carbon-fibre deck pan? YES! (kidding)

A slip in shell made of Delrin would work, but I don't know about cost.

Carbon fibres an excelent idea! Still don't know about cost though.

[wfopete 15]

I'm not a CF engineer nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night but I think CF would die an early death as a mower deck. The characteristics that CF is known for (one of which is light weight) don

[tarcoleo 119]

Jim, Pete et al-

I slept in a Holiday Inn last night, fitfully, and dreamt of an insert in the bottom

of a deck. Great idea. Two questions- what material should it be and how will corrosion

be prevented between the insert and the supporting or back-up steel structure?

Such an insert will be plastic or stainless I would guess.

Plastic might be cheaper to produce and could be molded to fit the contour of

the deck pan. It could be imagined that the insert would snap into place and

might only cover a partial area(s) of the pan making cleaning a much simpler

chore. It would be good if they could be removed without dropping the deck.

Stainless could also be made to do the above, or be a structural component, as

a full deck pan or as a partial component.

But what the hay, ain't gonna happen! Maybe we can get this done after we fix

health care.

Tom in RI :scratchead:

[wh500special 2,267]

I'd go with something like Polyethylene with a molded-in steel stiffening structure. PE, in particular UHMW (ultra high molecular weight) PE, is quite abrasion resistant and has a surface energy that keeps a lot of things from sticking to it. Much like Teflon (Polytetraflouroethylene - PTFE) but has mach better processability, is incredibly cheap, and has fair mechanical properties.

Hardly anything chemical will attack things like PE, but I'm not so sure what the consequences of UV light exposure would be after 20 years.

By chance, I happen to be a composites engineer who is intimately familiar with Carbon Fiber. Great stuff - light, stiff, reasonably strong - but it doesn't do well with abrasion and is a bit costly. There are some seriously cheap fibers on the market now (non-aerospace grade stuff in the $8/pound range), but part fabrication costs suck compared to stamping out steel forms. Too much touch labor unless you go with a short fiber compression molding/bulk molding compound/sprayup and then you lose most of the benefits of the material.

Glass would work better, but again has the same processing costs like carbon unless - again - you go with short fibers. Impact and abrasion properties are much better with glass than with carbon.

By "short fiber" I mean the type of junk bathtubs, campershells, some boats, and other low performing fiberglass parts are made of. Like the hoods on the C-161-twins and the E141. These tend to have a lot of resin (usually polyester which is similar to Bondo) which can't carry much load and is at the bottom of the plastics food chain. Fibers are about 1.5" (max) long and oriented in random directions which give reasonably uniform properties in any direction in-plane (the fun word for that is "quasi-isotropic") but are seldom optimized for the part geometry. A better performing design would have continuous fiber fabric layered in in multiple plies that tailor the finished good's strength to the application (e.g. fibers in a fishing rod are primarilly parallel with the axis of the rod blank).

Composites have some real disadvantages other than cost. First, it is extremely difficult to get a fastener to reliably hold in a composite without a lot of extra stiffeners or metallic backing plates. The alternative is to adhesively bond things together, but there are issues there too. Second, repair on a composite is much more complicated than welding in a patch or bending the tear back together. Even boat repair places struggle and blow it from time to time and they spend their careers messing with this stuff.

Benefits are generally decreased weight and increased corrosion resistance. Properly designed, it is possible to actually improve on the strength of a metal part by replacing it with glass or carbon. But generally the main issue is weight savings in applications that aren't extremely cost sensitive.

The fenders used on the "Black Stripe" tractors and the D250 were NOT Fiberglass. It burns me up to no end everytime I see someone talk about how their "fiberglass" fender is broken to pieces. They are just some kind of unreinforced injection molded plastic bargain basement piece of plastic. Probably PolyStyrene or ABS. There is no fiber in them and that's why they are so apt to shatter into a jigsaw puzzle at the drop of a hat. In my opinion, WH really screwed up with this fenders.

My guess would be that steel is actually the best material choice since it offers perhaps the best compromise of strength, processing ease, corrosion resistance, repairability, etc. We all have old tractors that have received questionable maintenance for decades and yet the steel deck has held up quite well. When meticulously maintained and kept dry, these decks might have lasted longer but really 10-15 years w/o troubles is actually quite an admirable acheivement. There is a finite life to the entire assembly, so the deck shell itself need not last forever.

Until recently when the boat industry started putting more effort and engineering into their hulls I wasn't a big fan of fiberglass boats either - I much preferred aluminum. They used to - more or less - slop a bunch of stuff in a gelcoated mold and cook the boat w/o much regard for optimized design. In a strange twist of fate, new EPA regulations governing styrene emissions have forced boatbuilders to revamp their processing and materials to curb emissions. One of the consequences of that has been a huge improvement in hull design since more directional fabric is used and less sprayup is concorporated. But, prices are going up...

As far as coatings are concerned the ideal surface would be hard and slick. I guess it might be possible to ceramic or porcelin coat the underside of a deck, but eventually the abrasive nature of the environment is going to wear everything out and you're left with trying to repair a difficult surface. Anything elastomeric - like undercoating or Rhino lining - seems like it would invite accumulation of debris.

Polished bare steel would probably really be a great material if it wasn't for the rust. I've thought about and tried various things but I seem to have had my best results with just frequent cleaning and repainting with something just to keep the rust at bay between seasons.

A lamination of a stainless inner and plain steel outer might work well, but I'm not sure such an animal economically exists. And an assembly of two skins would merely invite moisture entrapment and accelerate corrosion.

All Stainless Steel would probably make a nice mower deck, but I'm not sure the corrosion improvements would justify the added cost. Stainless is much more difficult to fabricate and it is generally not as strong and fatigue crack resistant as carbon steel. Repair would be difficult too since it is not as easily welded or drilled. Dixie Chopper puts SST body panels on thier tractors, I wonder if they've dabbled on the decks too?

I'm a composites guy, but I really think the steel mower deck is hard to beat.

Gotta get back to work,

Steve

[wfopete 15]

My guess would be that steel is actually the best material choice since it offers perhaps the best compromise of strength, processing ease, corrosion resistance, repairability, etc. We all have old tractors that have received questionable maintenance for decades and yet the steel deck has held up quite well. When meticulously maintained and kept dry, these decks might have lasted longer but really 10-15 years w/o troubles is actually quite an admirable acheivement. There is a finite life to the entire assembly, so the deck shell itself need not last forever.

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