That is a good thing to say....the dealer told me it was a "non removable" safety device. I honestly didn't look any closer after he told me that, that sticking out was a deal breaker for me. It stinks that Gators are such a small portion of sales at JD dealers I don't think they put much effort into learning the product line and that does a disservice to their customer, at minimum if they don't know the correct answer to your question they should just say so.:jm: