Hi TonyH,
I was at my local mower shop a few weeks ago and had a gander at their Husqvarna range and they had a range of B&S powered steel and alloy deck models that looked alright to me. There were self propelled a week as push only models. The engines came in various power ratings and I think I recall the upper end models had iron sleeve motors.
I recall a nice non self propelled alloy base model for not much above the $800 mark with a metal scrape guard on the left side.

Ahh, if only victa had kept producing the thumblatch catcher series, they would be in better shape today!