This Honda Utility looks like it uses the 21 inch SupaSwift base that has a short amount of flat steel after the bend at
the front and rear so it's not reinforced in the front and rear but the sides are longer sheet steel after the bend and
do have a bend in the lower skirts for added strength so if it was shortened it's not a straight forward job of just
cutting steel off the base.
Yes, the base is engineered in this manner - so point taken and I won't cut - had worried about this so good to know.
The common way to fix this issue is to lower the blades ,sometimes I put an eighth of an inch spacer between the
end of the crank and the blade plate.The spacer washers fit inside the center of the cranks blade plate hub.
So I had a good look underneath to see how I could go with this.
I've attached images of the main components applicable to this discussion. Those being the engine shaft, the blade boss, disc carrier plate and the affixing bolt/support plate.
I'm sure it's similar on many mowers but on the HUT the blade boss slide up the shaft to a certain point where it is stopped, the disc carrier plate is slotted into place within it's 3 holes, then a small spacing washer and the locking bolt and plate/washer are screwed in.
I tried a bunch of things with these areas and nothing could be found to lower the disc carrier while keeping it firmly in place.
The only slight success I had was using a couple of very thick split washers in between the blades and the carrier disc. This lowered the disc's effective cutting height by maybe 4-5mm.
Still need a tad more though.
Another easy way would be to fit stepped blades instead of flat blades but you will need to experiment to find
a blade that suits.
As chance had it I have these EXACT blades - the stepped Masport 21" ones. But they're really not suitable to use with the Honda carrier disc as they have this raised section where the bolt goes through , whereas the Honda ones have a flat top. as is the blades I am already using are mildly stepped - I'm using the Honda fluted blades (which i had to remove some of the flute top corner from) as I prefer the wind force these generate to jettison cuttings as opposed to the completely flat proper HUT's blades.
So finding suitable blades that are more stepped might be very tricky and might only grab me another 2mm or so.
If applying both methods the spacer on the crank and lower blades, this may be 10 mm lower as long as the
blades aren't lower than the lowest part of the base.
Not sure how I could apply a spacer on the crank....the problem I found with this was that the blade boss either wouldn't be held in place correctly or the disc carrier wouldn't. Very marginal ability to change this via that methodology.
