Hi Norm,

Much thanks for your reply..

100% get where you're coming from - and of course as they say hindsight is a beautiful thing and perhaps had I known about the 24"s advantages I might have given them more consideration - which is only to say I have to give the current 550's a bit of a crack, if no good I'll cut my losses and perhaps consider a 24" as part of the platoon approach to solving the issues here.

I get what you're saying about lifting the motor still leaving the skirt on the grass - that said I didn't find this a problem too much and the grass was (due to the combination of loads of rain, very hot days and an inability to mow it due to the first 2 factors) longer than it's been in the near 4yrs we've been here. But I agree that raising the motor isn't perhaps the easiest path- unless I raised it a lot I doubt the angle change would cause issues with the drive belt angle/array?

But you're (again) 100% right in that increasing the size of the front wheels as first thing to try....haha to give myself a little credit, I did realise this earlier today before I saw your reply.

The 550's I received seems to run smaller wheels on the front than on the rear - and changing this over to similar sized wheels could be about the 10mm height increase that would likely be ideal.

First thing I tried was taking the front wheels off the Mastercut 460 I had just used to cut the chicken coop's grass. Alas no luck as the thickness of the arms(unsure if right term?) the wheels slide onto were thicker on the 460 than the 550. Not to be stopped I changed the bearings out of the wheel ouoters - they went on then BUT the 460's wheels were too wide and I couldn't get the fastening pin/thingy back on to hold them in place.

So then I had a pair of old Rover rear wheels from a SP mower - not ideal as have extra weight in them BUT went on one side fine but on the side with the sideshoot the larger wheel wouldn't go on as it then rubbed against the chassis/deck. So I'd have to cut atleast a small piece of the deck out or perhaps if very lucky just grind some off.

So will have to reassess best path but alas just changing to bigger wheels seems tricky as well....real Murphy's law scenario.

Oh yes, rest assured given the plethora of mowers I've been through and continue to do so I am not doubting that there's no single best machine - so I know I will need several different ones - am committed to staying with the Honda HUT216 (as it's amazingly good when I have the energy to push cut everything), the Mastercut 460 (as it's superlight and can go where the bigger mowers can't)......other than that the 19" Honda, 21" Masport and these 550's are on trial periods and will be shipped off if no marginal benefit. :-)

Cutting and welding the axle arms sounds a bit of a worry - I've only got an old ARC welder and I'm very bodgy on it - I'd worry that any welding might do as much or more harm than good with how rough things are here and the bashing they'd take.

Thanks again - let me know if you have anymore ideas. :-)