I have the John Deere X320, bought in 2006. It has a 48" 3 blade deck, which I put the mulching kit on, including mulching blades. I live on a hillside, and have some steep hills. I've never had any problems at all, including when I pull around my 48" core aerator and trailor full of who knows what. I did put two of the suitcase weights on the back to help with traction on the hills. I also have many blue spruces to mow around, so I slapped a grill gaurd on the front, which actually does help, even though I wanted it for the cool look. The cut is good, but I follow a pattern, so it looks better. I keep the mowing height at 2.75", which is healthier for the lawn, but is also the lowest I can go before I get too close to scalping on the hill crests. The deck is easy enough to take off and put on, but leveling the deck is a pain, although not hard to do. As for leaving grass clumps with the mulch deck, well, it ONLY happens when I have let the lawn grow too long, and it is wet. In that case, I just drive over it a 2nd time and it goes away. All in all, I am VERY happy with my X320, and really enjoy mowing with it. Oh, and about the 4-wheel steer, I was told by the guy at the dealership to avoid it if you have steep hills, as you risk a rollover if you have to turn on a hill, which I do. Joe

Yes I actually did take the baffles off. Like I said I tried everything. The machine come with the Husq mulch blades. The gators work better. Have them on now. When the machine was delivered the deck pitch was so extreme. It mulched but didn’t cut nice. ( I’m figuring the delivered machine with the steep pitch was deliberate. Maybe the factory told them that helps??????? )They put the mulch kit on. Can’t see a reputable service center not checking Blade height and all. Anyways. It’s when I adjusted the pitch to recommend setting that the cut was nice but it would leave a strip of cut grass but not mulched down the middle of the path. Even when it was short or dry or thin. Funny thing is last night the grass was high and wet and it seems to mulch better when it’s wet with that extreme pitch. It did leave some clumps but it’s what you would expect to see with it that high. But the clumps where mulched up. Only had to go over a couple little spots twice instead of the whole yard. As far as adjusting the front up. Just for the hell of it I took a path going backward Last night. Left more clumps of grass. Once went backwards with a level deck and it leaves a thin strip of grass to the right of the mower like my old Honda self propelled mower does. So for now that’s my fix. I’ll sharpen those blade up again. That will help with the cut. I’ll pay attention to anything posted. Maybe someone figured out a better fix for this. Thanks with your feed back.

I've tried a variety of composting methods over the years. My first was a 3' circle of chicken wire (all I could afford). The side aeartion was nice, but I kept getting the pitchfork tines stuck in the chicken wire. After that, I made a compost garden. That was an 8' octogon raised frame bed with a 2'diameter chicken wire in the middle. I dumped compostable stuff in the chicken wire, never turned it, and let nurients leach into the surrounding soil to feed cucumbers up the chicken wire, tomotos outside that and bell peppers and flowers and the outer ring. Worked well actually. More interesting, I happened to drive past the old house and, 20 years later, the octogon is still there (but with roses)! When I moved, I tried a plastic cylander that you filled up, waited a few weeks, lifted up and moved to the side and refilled from the old pile and with new material. It actually worked OK, but it was a pain to move. I finally build a real double compost bin. 4x4x3'H. I got tired of turning the compost from 1 bin to another and they both ended up being filled. That meant I had to fork everything out of one bin onto the ground, move the 2nd bin into the 1st, and move all the outside stuff into the 2nd. And the rich supply of melon rinds, carrot and potato peels, etc from the kitchen waste was attracting critters. Well, if they were eating the best stuff, it wasn't doing me any good. I decided to re-think the whole process... I started to leave my grass clippings on the lawn (free fertilizer). And I decided that the trees needed the nutrients from the decomposing leaves, so I merely shredded them with the mower and left them in place. That way, they wouldn't blow away, and any blown-in leaves would add to the nutrient pile. But I still had kitchen waste and weeds to compost. So I got an aerated closed tumbler to use for the rich critter-tempting stuff. The built compost bins get all the weeds and old flower stems and such. With an occasional shovel of fertile garden soil, that stuff breaks down eventually. The compost tumbler doesn't make compost worth a darn, but it does hold the kitchen waste nicely until it is too far gone to attract critters. So then it goes onto the old compost bins (turning it in once a month isn't much trouble). The other half of my new system is to get free mulch from the County recycling Center. It is lousy mulch, but only becuase it is way too decomposed for mulch. It does however make great compost after it sits for a year. It is as good as the leaf compost available commercially. I even let all my chicken bones dry out in the basement, pound them into pieces, and toss them in the kitchen waste tumbler to break down (free bonemeal) So the lawn keeps its clippings, the trees keep the fallen leaves, the critters can't get at the tempting kitchen waste, the old compost bins slowly provide some compost with little effort, and the year-old "mulch" is good as soil. I'm actually accumulating more than I can use. Guess where it is going? On the lawn! I have one of those pushable mesh barrels to sprinkle compost over the lawn. Anything that doesn't fall out through the mesh goes back onto the compost bin. :)

I've never run the Piranha with the deflector removed. Not sure how that would work out. I currently have the mulch deflector installed (M120965) which, unlike a "mulch plug" does actually allow a slight discharge of clippings. There is also a rear discharge insert (M120966) available which you'd swap out with the mulching discharge chute, if you want to use it as a conventional mower. I'd guess it increases the airflow volume by about 3x, and I'm sure it would still mulch quite a bit, with six blades spinning over a 44" swath. If you read the US patent description, the original intent was that a homeowner could easily convert this deck into a neglected-grass mower for certain situations like returning from vacation. Go to the JD parts catalog (link below), click on equipment search, type "deck" then scroll down to "mower decks for LX, GT, etc... Click on Sectional Index, then "44 inch mulching mower." When you open up the "mower deck, chute and gage wheels" view you'll see what I'm talking about. The Piranha will cut high grass. You just might have to go over it twice to mulch it completely. But it's not like your mower will become ineffective if your grass reaches 3". I previously owned a Cub Cadet with a mulch plug in the convertable deck. If the grass was too high it would basically clog up and leave about a third of the pass uncut. The Piranha doesn't do that, as far as I've seen. It just leaves clumps of clippings atop the otherwise evenly cut grass--if I let it get too long. Second pass elminates it completely. As long as I cut once a week, that doesn't happen. I sit and think of all the time I wasted bagging and dumping grass clippings (and unclogging the chute). Now here I am, with the same end result (minus the 4x8' compost bin), and the organic matter is instantaneously recycled into the soil. What a great purchase; probably would have been worth paying retail if I hadn't come across such a good deal. Nah, I'm too cheap to drop $900 on a mower deck. That extra $600 on top of what I spent buys a lot of Yuengling Lager and strip steak 5-packs from Sam's Club. I'd probably have to switch to Milwakee's Best and eye round steaks this summer if I'd paid full retail. Here is a link that might be useful: jd parts catalog