Why not just sell the 3 mowers and grab a utility.
Or grab a utility, sort it and sell whats left.
The cutting and shutting and all that, not worth the trouble.
Biggest issue i can see is that the body you modify will rust out. If you mow with the door shut the mushed up clippings all collect under the LH handle bolt and the frame rusts out there.
Same things happens on mowers that are never washed/cleaned or used in salty areas.
If you are going to have the door up and deflect from there it is not terribly efficent.
I did do that for a mate, just used a bit of perforated steel, cut a bit out so it would hook onto the axle, curved it around, then pop riveted a bit of angle iron and a bolt through the door to hold it. Worked Ok. But then he gave me his 24" MTD slasher with the chinese 3.75 sprint on it. I got it running again, pulled the motor off and put a 5Hp quantum on it, modified the body a bit where buffer ring had fallen off, opened up the side door and he was going to make up a chute to weld too it, hes never looked back does and awesome job, twice the machine it was new.
Doing anything to a blade disc is a bad bad idea.
For about $50 you can get a new 4 blade disc with blades.
Victa Utility blades will go on one of those discs and for slashing will do as good a job as normal baldes and do not use as much HP to spin as they have no flute on the back edge.
2 blades is plenty.
The disc from the early mustang, can you put up pics of it?? Im thinking its probably a Vortex disc. No point modifying it, regular 18" Victa blades do not work on it. The Series I Vortex had short little blades on it.
Got Pics of the mowers???
What is usually refered to as a Victa 'Sport' around here is an alloy base Victa Sports from the 70's.
A steel base Victa is just a steel base Victa no matter what they called it. 100 different names for the same thing. Catchers are real easy to come by.
If you want a slasher, i would suggest you fix what youve got, sell em and buy what you are looking for. You will come out way in front especailly if you can buy what you are looking for as a fixer upper.
Cheers, Bob.