Preventing lawn mower rust

The likely cause of this is that the grass is too high for your mowers deck. You should try just mowing about 1/3 of the blade at a time (if you can) until you reach your desired length, so if you grass is 6" high, only take off about 2" at first to reduce the stress on your mower. Set your mower deck to it's highest setting and give it a shot.

Also, be sure that the blades are sharp, and if you don't have mulching blades, you should get some! Grass this high will leave long clippings on the lawn which can suffocate the grass, mulching blades will chop up the clippings into smaller pieces, which is beneficial for your lawn!

Finally, make sure you aren't mowing wet grass. If you mow when the grass is wet the clippings can stick together and clump up under the mowing deck which will cause excess strain to the mower and maybe even cause it to shut off.

If none of this works, you may want to use a string trimmer to remove the first two inches of your grass and then continue mowing as normal!

Hope this helps! Happy Mowing!

at tractor supply has a paint called slip

I had the same problem with my Troy-Bilt self propelled lawn mower. You have to use the grass catcher if your grass is high. Also, I mowed wet grass and it made my belt slip off the pulley and created a new problem, somowing wet grass is definitely not a good idea.

This can be happening from a couple of reasons, first if your grass is too damp this will happen with almost any mower, wait till the lawn dries out before cutting, you may be cutting the lawn when it is too high, try cutting it twice a week maybe this will help, you may try to raise the cut setting eliminating the amount of grass clippings that you have accumulated, if you are mulching or using the bag be sure the chute is clear, and lastly be sure you are running at a higher speed to push through the terrain.
Happy Mowing!!