We have a garden tractor with 54 inch mower deck. Every now and then I jack up the tractor to clean the underside of the deck. I usually find that grass is heavily caked to the deck, and it takes about 30 minute to remove the grass using a scraping tool. The biggest problem is that it causes the deck to rust. When I scrape the old grass off the underside of the deck, rust often falls from it, too.
It has a washout port for use with a garden hose. I’ve tried it a couples times. It seems useless.
To minimize the rusting problem, I suppose I should religiously clean the deck immediately after cutting the grass. But I often forget. Or I just don’t feel like it. Or am too damn lazy.
If I do a thorough job of cleaning it with a wire brush wheel, is there some kind of paint I can apply to the underside of the deck that will protect it? It would have to be an extremely durable paint.
You know the hard, non-stick finish applied to pans and skillets? I wonder why they don’t apply that to the underside of mower decks.
Question asked and answered in the same post. Non-stick finishes can’t even stand up to utensils made of anything more scratchy than silicon. They’d last about ten minutes when faced with abrasive grass, rocks, and sand.
I didn’t do it this last fall but I usually drop the deck, wire wheel, and spray paint the inside of the more deck once a year. The paint doesn’t last long but I think the good cleaning helps prolong the life of the deck. I’ve often wondered how well the spray-on bed liners would work.
Don’t know if you’re up for the amount of effort this would take, but POR-15 is just about the toughest, hardest, thing you could apply. Application is a bitch though. How durable and long lasting it is, is likely directly proportionate to how well you prep before final coat.
