The 'good' products for stripping like the Zinsser (I imagine) contained methylene chloride, which was banned in 2019. They may still be available for commercial use. If you search the internet for paint strippers, you will often see a reference to aircraft stripper. The old formulation was methylene chloride, the new is not and is not effective at all in stripping paint off of mower decks.
In my experience, mehtylene chloride does an ok job at removing powder coat. I've been working at a 10515 deck and after multiple coats, there are still portions that don't come off. It did even worse on a 10525 deck I'm also working on. The days I worked on it weren't particularly hot, so I'm going to try again this summer, along with one of the orange products from Lowes.
I talked to a guy that does standblasting and he said that powder coat is harder to remove than paint. I may drop off a few decks and see how far $100 goes.
Regarding powder coat vs paint, powder coat does make a thick finish that holds up to abrasion, but once you break through it and get some corrosion underneath, game over. It just starts coming off in sheets. I've had enough painted Lawn Boys from the early 80's that had chipped paint, but otherwise looked good, vs powder coated decks from the 90's where 50% of the powder coat peeled off and the deck is mostly exposed aluminum.
I feel there is a misconception out there on powder coat. Once of the reason powder coat became popular was due to environmental regulations regarding paint booths. Many companies needed to make expensive updates to control vapors and powder coating was a cheaper option, not necessarily the better one.
