414-8 42 in Mower Deck to Mulcher Conversion

[Steve Janninck 171]

On a recent 37 in Mower Deck thread, a member @TractorEd installed a removable plug for his side discharge to help improving the mulching of the grass. He did a heck of a job to make it look perfect. There were a bunch of great comments and ideas, so I thought I would try to give the effort to see if it will work or not.

 

The test deck is a 42 in Side Discharge that’s under a 1986 414-8. 
 

I have shaped up a cardboard template that will eventually become steel. Thinking I will weld on a few tabs so the Mulching Plug / Shroud could be easily removed. 
 

So will this work? Good question. Has this been done before? One way to find out.

 

Please let me know your thoughts. I will wait for comments prior to cutting the steel. 
 

Thanks for the inspiration!

Steve

Edited July 28 by Steve Janninck
Member recognition

[gwest_ca-(File Mod) 11,040]

Click on the picture in the link

 

[Steve Janninck 171]

Wow! That’s an extremely complex piece. I’m  thinking it may have not worked as intended. Does anyone have this piece and using it? Would love to hear real feedback. My thought was to try to duplicate my Honda push mower which mulches great, although it has a double cut blade. The Honda only has 3 inches between the blade and the top of the deck. This WH deck has 4 inches from the cutting edge to the top of the deck and the gator blades stick up about an inch and give lift and turbulence. 
Thanks for this reference, thinking I could maybe also make 2 v shaped wedges between the 3 rotating blades on the front side. What do you think?

[Handy Don 12,209]

1 hour ago, Steve Janninck said:

Please let me know your thoughts

Some thoughts on you cleverly ambitious idea!

- I think it’ll largely work

- The cutting wings on the top of the blade are angled to create an outward and downward from center airflow forcing the clipping against their cutting edges. Where this happens, the mulched clippings are now below the balde and likely fall to the ground

- However, the blades are all turning in the same direction--CCW looking from below. Clippings staying above the blade might tend to move across the front to the blade near the now-blocked discharge. That blade’s airflow/clippings might or might not swing back along the curved rear baffles to the center and right blades to be revisited. Or the mulched grass, encountering the friction against the new blocking plate slow and fall along that edge. Either way, a slower forward speed would likely offset this. (The WH recycler also needs a slower forward speed than an open discharge mower--handy to have a hydro for this!)

Good pictures of before and after in different types of grass (dry, wet, tall, short) and with leaves would be very appreciated!

[Handy Don 12,209]

19 minutes ago, Steve Janninck said:

Does anyone have this piece and using it?

My son is running a 312-H with a 42” recycler and it does work reasonably well. The cut is even and smooth. It can get overwhelmed with heavy leaf cover or when cutting off more than two inches of wet grass--it starts to leave clumps. In less challenging conditions, it leaves little or no trace of clippings on top of the grass. And as I noted in the previous post, it must be fed slightly slower and it takes more power than an open discharge deck to work at its best--I would say the 12hp is the minimum power for good results from it at decent mowing speeds.

[Steve Janninck 171]

So another idea I have been using to increase the chopping is to sharpen the gator blade uplift tines. There are 3 tines but only the outside 2 do anything. The two outer ones are all that gets sharpened. Just wanted to share this because I have to agree with most that the gator blade improves, but could be better.

Steve

[Lane Ranger 10,968]

I know I have used a 42 inch Recyling deck with the baffle inside for several years.  I don’t mow every time with it but I particularly like to use it early in the year when the fresh grass growth is quick and the lawn gets high.

 

I think the recycler does a great job.  Less wind rows than a regular rear discharge deck.

 

 

i also use a 1974-B-80 with a 36 inch rear discharge deck and have two Oregon Recycler blades on the outer spindles.  It works well and I use it off and on during the year!

 

 

[Steve Janninck 171]

Progress!

16 Gauge basic cut and rolled.

[TractorEd 633]

@Steve Janninck your design is great!  Simple and efficient.  I think it should work nicely.

I hope to be doing the same to a 42” deck I have “some day”.  You do real nice work!

Awesome job!

 

I will probably blatantly steal your design as closely as possible! 👍🏻

Edited July 28 by TractorEd

[Steve Janninck 171]

The modification is complete!

Now the testing will begin. Should be interesting to see what happens. Thanks for the project today @TractorEd. 
Steve

[TractorEd 633]

2 minutes ago, Steve Janninck said:

The modification is complete!

Absolutely incredible how fast you put that together AND made it look so nice.  Mint.  I need your energy and ambition!  Really nice, Steve.

 

please share how it works, too!

👏

[Handy Don 12,209]

3 hours ago, Steve Janninck said:

There are 3 tines but only the outside 2 do anything. The two outer ones are all that gets sharpened.

Makes sense as the innermost is there to start the air flow outward toward the two cutters.

[Lane Ranger 10,968]

16 hours ago, Steve Janninck said:

So another idea I have been using to increase the chopping is to sharpen the gator blade uplift tines. There are 3 tines but only the outside 2 do anything. The two outer ones are all that gets sharpened. Just wanted to share this because I have to agree with most that the gator blade improves, but could be better.

Steve

 

Steve :  what blades are you using on your 42 deck?  Those are not Oregon mulching blades from

what I can tell. 

[Steve Janninck 171]

1 hour ago, Lane Ranger said:

 

Steve :  what blades are you using on your 42 deck?  Those are not Oregon mulching blades from

what I can tell. 

Lane,

These are 8TEN Parts LawnRAZOR Mulching Blades.

8Ten Parts

If I remember correctly, the set of 3 was about 40 bucks. 4 years old and wearing well.

Steve

[TractorEd 633]

On 7/29/2024 at 9:09 AM, Steve Janninck said:

8TEN

I’ll see if I can find some of these for my 37” deck!  Thanks!

[Steve Janninck 171]

Got a chance to mow for a few hours with the mulching modification. Overall a win. The grass mulch is finer than it’s ever been which was the objective. Grass was at about 6 inches and I cut it to 4. Morning dew and a humid light rain week here in Northern IL.

The only thing I need to improve is a small line of mulched grass grouping on the RH side when in heavy grass. In the pictures was a section of the yard that was wet and long. You can see the line. One edging overlapping pass over the line wipes it out. 
I have an idea to make an additional bolt on modification to take this to yet another level.

Steve

[Steve Janninck 171]

Close up of the edge. This was looking back at was just cut.

[Steve Janninck 171]

Grass mulch size.

[ebinmaine 67,406]

39 minutes ago, Steve Janninck said:

Grass mulch size.

 

 

I'd call that a success. 

[Handy Don 12,209]

1 hour ago, Steve Janninck said:

Close up of the edge. This was looking back at was just cut.

Looks like a win to me. Well done!

[Steve Janninck 171]

So I think I am going to apply Rev1 to the mulching deck.

If you look at the area I have shaded in red, there is a large gap between the blades and the deck on the front edge. I am sure this is in place to discharge all the clipping from LH to RH and then out the discharge. Since my intention is for the grass to not side discharge, but to mulch and drop down, I think I am going to try to replicate the mulching attachment WH created. I am going to create a bolt in W (shaded green) to basically stop that flow to the RH side of the deck. The blue shaded are would allow each mowing chamber to be open to each other. Or should I make three separate chambers, not allowing the gap?

What do you think? 
Do you think this will be a good thing or a step backwards?

I just got the 16 Guage steel plate in today, thinking I will aim to have something in place for next weeks grass battle.

Have a good day!

Steve

 

[Handy Don 12,209]

I applaud your determination and progress so far! Nicely done!

 

The WH recycler has partial gaps in the shell between the blades. They look more like notches cut up from the grass side toward the shell. If memory serves, they are about 3 or 3-½” long and about 1-1/2” vertically. They span the point where the blades come closest to each other -- I believe to give a bit of extra clearance in both directions to the blades and to avoid having to get ultra precise fitting. In your case you’ll have to consider the up-wing on the end of the blade.

[Steve Janninck 171]

8 minutes ago, Handy Don said:

I applaud your determination and progress so far! Nicely done!

 

The WH recycler has partial gaps in the shell between the blades. They look more like notches cut up from the grass side toward the shell. If memory serves, they are about 3 or 3-½” long and about 1-1/2” vertically. They span the point where the blades come closest to each other -- I believe to give a bit of extra clearance in both directions to the blades and to avoid having to get ultra precise fitting. In your case you’ll have to consider the up-wing on the end of the blade.

Don,

Thanks for the comment.

The blades do come so close that I really don’t think I could squeeze a piece of 16 GA between them. Having never had my eyes on what WH created, I thought I would just create a notch / opening at the blade collision area and wall off above. 
This Revision will be fun to make.

Steve

[OutdoorEnvy 1,522]

This has been a very neat project.  Thanks for taking the time to document and share the progress and results.  I've pondered the same kind of project so this has been interesting and looking forward to the updates! 

[Steve Janninck 171]

Finally got some time in the shop this morning. 2 observations.

1. I need to sharpen all the teeth on the gator blades. Picture show the grass is now actually getting to the center of the blade and NOT getting chopped by the one blade tooth I didn’t sharpen. I thinking that now that I have changed the airflow in the deck the grass is spending more time in deck before falling out. I have never seen grass gather on that first tooth in the past.

2. Looking at the blade tip to tip distance I may actually be able to have a continuous baffle without a blade notch where the tips get the closest. Have to build it to prove the clearances. 

Back to fabrication and blade RE sharpening!

Steve