It has been a productive month with the mower... Upon maiden voyage, I noticed the rear was slipping on the side yard incline. After research, I purchased Marastar Turf Traction tires for the rear. These tires have superb traction (aggressive tread) over the stock Carlisle tires but do not cut up the lawn. They have great reviews too. I replaced the front tires with stock Carlisles. Huge improvement over stock and slipping is nearly indictable.
Rear Tires:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Weakest link identified - I broke the RH tie rod I'm sure because of the new tires. I'm process of replacing both RH and LH tie rods, and the main steering gear due to wear on the teeth. Lots of good tutorial videos on Youtube! I also installed a new headlight harness, head lamps, headlight lenses and changed the air filter, spark plugs, oil/oil filter, oil drain hose, and misc hardware. Lastly I scraped the deck clean and installed new blades.
The mower should be good to go for many seasons of issue free cutting!
Dan