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STX38 Black Soot on Deck and Wheels

5K views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  BigJim55 
#1 ·
Anyone experience black soot-like material on the mower deck and wheels? It is limited to the chute side and exhaust side of the JD riding lawn mower. When running the engine for 5 minutes (without the mower deck engaged) no soot shows. Once i engage the mower deck and mow, soot develops all over the deck and r. side wheels. I haven't isolated this as an engine problem or mower deck - belt problem. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks
 
#2 ·
Not doubting what you're seeing, we here in central Iowa are having a lot of black dust on the mower and deck I suspect coming from a fungus from the grass. I've not seen black dust until this year, we have had red (rust fungus) in the past.

It's highly unlikely your mower by itself is generating enough soot to cover the mower in 5 minutes. Belt damage should be easy to see and would be mostly on top near the center of the deck. Your mower is a gas engine, and if it's running rich enough to generate that amount of soot, you could NOT see it.

Go walking through your grass with white tennies and report back. :thumbup1gif:
 
#3 ·
I never thought of that but i know exactly what your talking about the red/rust looking fungus, which i haven't seen this summer. I wear dark/black shoes so maybe that is why it hasn't been as evident if it's black dust this year. I haven't seen any wear to the mower deck belt nor any dark smoke coming off the exhaust. I'll report back - thanks for the tip!
 
#5 ·
No problem.

I was out this afternoon and I'll bet it looks something like the "soot" in these two pictures, this of course is from the quick hitch, on the rear, but it's all over the machine. Not sure which fungus it is exactly, it doesn't seem to stain and it comes off easily.




 

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#7 ·
Looking a little further into the source, turns out it appears that it is a slime mold and a byproduct of the decomposition of organic matter. I should be good to go, as I used the broom yesterday evening to remove excess thatch, and apparently will knock the mold off the blades of grass. We've had another really bad year for lawn growth; extremely wet early on, then crazy hot temperatures that triggered dormancy, followed by cooler than normal wet, grass came out of dormancy, followed by dry and hot that put it back into dormancy. They only thing that has grown well this year is the crabgrass, yellow foxtail, prostrate knot weed, barnyard grass, nutsedge and dandelions. My yard is a MESS!
 
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