# Lining up blades on 3 blade deck



## snowmower

I have question that is not addressed in the owner's manual.

I frequently removed the 54" (3 blade) deck from the DGT6000 for cleaning. But, when I put it back on, I am not sure how the blades should be set up.

For example, on my 42" LTX, I believe the blades are supposed to be perpendicular to each other .... I -- (pretend these are the blades).

But for the 3 blades, should they be perpendicular to each other or off set 60 degrees to each other?
I -- I or I \ /.

Hope this makes sense.

thanks
SnowMower


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## bontai Joe

The blades are not timed and if you try to "time" them, they will move around on their own. the tips miss each other no matter how you orient them, so there is no need to worry about it.


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## snowmower

That's sort of what I figured. Thanks Joe. 
Believe me, I have knocked them out of alignment enough that if they did hit, it would be disasterous.

I was wondering about balance though. You don't think it would make the least bit of difference?
And if not, why do they note in the manual for my smaller tractor?

SnowMower


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## bontai Joe

Some two blade decks are set up with a geared timing belt and matching drive pulleys on the blades and have to be timed for the tips to miss. The 2 blade deck either had to have one blade forward of the other and offset in so the one behind would overlap as it traveled forward and therefore could use a std. "V" belt, or the blade shafts were side by side and needed to be timed to allow each blade to pass through the center of the deck when the other blade wasn't there. I have never seen a 3 blade deck set up that needed to be timed. On a 3 blade deck, the center blade is ahead of the 2 outboard blades and as the tractor travels in a straight line, the cutting widths overlap, so as not to require timing.


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## Chipmaker

I could see a deck that has timed blades as being one hell of a headache.......Its just so much easier and trouble free to have one blade set slightly ahead of the other to offset and create an overlap instead of timing them and creating a problematic situation for the most part.


Balance is another thing, I am unsure of. I can see it being of importance up to a certain point, but nicks and chuncks issing here and there is going to mean grinding a heap of material off a blade to make em balanced. I have run many blades with deep nicks and stuff and have not had any problems. It may be more noticeable on some machines than others but certainly has not ever been a problem on any machine I have ever had.

Years back I went to Marine Prop repair school in St. Louis, and they taught us balance on a marine prop up to a point is ok, but they do not really need to be balanced. They took a brand new prop out of the box and put in on a static and also a dynamic balancer, and it was way out of balance, yet it did not vibrate any in use. The main thing was that each blade had the same pitch so as to not set up an imbalanced condition in regards top its screw action (one blade pulling more or less than the others, not a weight balance problem) This is mainly because a marine boat prop does ot free wheel in a medium as air, and water being much denser works as a dampner of sorts. I would have to believe the same thing applies to a mower blade more than weight balance.


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## fotno

*For what it's worth*

I just finished installing a two blade set on my next door neighbors 42" Craftsman, replacing an over 6 year old set. Surprisingly the old blades still did a fairly decent job, but I was stunned when I removed the old set from the deck. The chute side blade had 3/4" of the tip completely missing from one side only. I would have assumed it would have shaken the machine to pieces, but I ran it myself in that condition, and it was smooth, and again cut fairly well. I guess there's a certain amount of shock absorbtion built into the design. 
Fotno


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## rkp3

bontai Joe said:


> The blades are not timed and if you try to "time" them, they will move around on their own. the tips miss each other no matter how you orient them, so there is no need to worry about it.


This all depends on your mower there are some 3 blade mower decks that are timed.


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