In my experiences commercial mowing with Ingersolls with N46 decks, I stopped using the cups as they tended to collect woundup up stuff which sometimes pushed into the lower bearings causing them to fail more often. The spindle usually needed to be removed and or dissassembled to clear out the wound up stuff where as if the cups were not installed, the crap was easier to just remove for the most part. Just looking at the parts manual and I left out both the bearing shield and the bearing shield spacer on my N46 decks which further reduced the space where the crap could wind onto. JMO!
I also stopped using the shields on the RM48 decks on my 4000 series machines as they were not available for a while when parts got scarce some years back. Again I saw no problems without them installed.
Mad Mackie in CT :mrgreen: :mowlawn: