Top of deck stays cleaner, reducing time and effort needed for cleaning and service.There are few places to catch and hold material on the top and underneath the deck.Any further discussion of the 54'lb torque appreciated.The flat-top shape of the deck stamping is optimal for keeping itself and the operator clean:

I'd rather have them somewhat over-tight than loose. I may like some have mentioned consider lowering to 50-60 'lbs in future if I find the nutz too tight again. I do agree about wet torque and its adverse effect of possibly skewing the actual torque amount- but we'll see what the outcome is when I next attempt to remove the blades. It is a German manufacturer of high-end parts for the automotive trade, and their products are excellent, though pricey. I have found that the copper anti-seize works best- I usually use Wurth brand, from when I had my foreign auto shop. So I wire wheeled the spindle bolts threads and applied a light coat of COPPER anti-seize, and torqued to 75 ft lbs. Evidently they aren't! The shop owner, a Scag dealer, told me he often has to use a Dremil tool to cut off the top nut to change/sharpen blades. Called my dealer to make sure, before using the cheater pipe, that the blades weren't reverse, (left hand) thread. Thought the breaker bar might break, but it didn't - fortunately. Prior Pro owner had grey anti-seize on the spindle bolts but they would not budge without a 1.5' breaker bar and a pipe 'cheater'. Not crazy about that combination so I put my adjustable jack stands under the machine before I crawl under it. My hydraulic floor jack just makes it high enough as long as I add a piese of 2 by on the lift plate. I have to raise up this machine considerably in order to get the blade bolts to clear the bottom of the spindles and fall out. I put a thin aircraft type washer under this nut in hopse that it will prevent what happened, time will tell!!! I have the nuts here in my parts stash but not the bolt, Scag dealer stocks them and told me that they are a common replacement part. I damaged the bolt in the process of drilling the nut to split it so I had to replace both.

The blade on this spindle was in worse condition than the other two and I think that from striking rocks, roots, or other not easily moved objects, the bolt tightened excessively. I had to drill small holes progressively on opposite sides of the nut and took a chisel and hammer to split the nut to remove it. even with a 400FTLB impact wrench and the air compressor at max pressure, I couldn't remove the nut on the R/H blade bolt. I started to change the blades on my Scag Tiger Cub 48' deck today and ran into a problem.

John deere z335e blade removal