Looks to me like that little sucker has served you well. I'd find a nice quite place, plant some flowers, maybe a grave marker and send it off to never-never land.
I thought about rear discharge several times on a mid mount ZT because I have a lot of cross wind where I mow and kid you not, regardless....goggles or not, grass always gets in my right eye. Thought a RD would be the solution but checking on such, in the type machine I mentioned, seems I't have a lot of clumping and bunching behind the mower....don't want that. I like the fine residue from side discharge. However, the drag type doesn't seem to have that problem...or maybe it does.
I know on single blade shredders, I always tilt the back up so that I have full width cleared area to ensure that all the grass gets out when cut as it's cut for that finished look....if the grass/mowed area is low/thin enough to cooperate.
