Doug Koehler

Sorry to hear of your trouble, and even sorrier that Husqvarna still hasn't fixed their faulty design. An engineer friend looked at my pictures and said it looks like primer on the metal (right picture, upper right) where there should be bare, broken metal. He said if he had to guess, it looks like there was a flaw in the metal and some primer seeped in, hiding the crack, before the final coat of paint was applied. But without actually seeing it and testing the substance, he couldn't say for certain.

Ultimately (on the advice of a Husqvarna phone rep, who I hope didn't lose their job), I took my defective mower back to the dealer. They hemmed and hawed and looked at it and called some people and looked at it again and everyone agreed it shouldn't have done that... and after about an hour of that they finally decided to exchange my broken mower for a brand new one of the same model.

And we've been VERY cautious with it ever since.

Best of luck to you and I hope you get it resolved.