This weekend I will give a shot to running the stock blades (797696) at left and center, and the high lift blade (602416) on the right/discharge side. This may help balance the performance of both styles of blades. I will report back with my observations.
I ran this experiment last night, and nothing negative to report. I was able to single cut the lawn this time (usually I need a double cut to disperse all of the clippings), but this may or may not have been a result of the blade combination.
There were two conditions worth noting as they may have made more of a difference than the blades themselves:
- Cut conditions were near perfect. Only 4 days since my last cut, lawn was completely dry, and atmosphere was dry as well. Temps have been cool at night (50-60) and not too bad during the day (70-80) this past week. Obviously, the mower always does better in these types of conditions.
- I also installed the Hustler striping kit (flap at the back of the deck) before cutting, so the intensity of the stripes produced was greater.
Clippings dispersed very well, no clumping at all, deck was clean when I was done. Still a couple of stragglers on each pass if you get down close to the lawn level to look (I'm on a slight hill, so the stragglers can sometimes be easier to see). Most significantly, like I mentioned earlier, only a single cut was required to get good dispersal.
I'll run this combination for a while and see how it works out. Pictures later, though it's hard to show cut quality comparisons in a picture.