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3
/ 5
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Good but not Great,
August 12, 2008
By kb5ynf
from Arkansas
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"I've had this mower for about a month now. I've used it four times. Before receiving the mower, I mowed my 1.7 acres with my Dad's commercial John Deere Z-Trak mower which is a great product. If I had my druthers, I'd have bought a zero radius mower instead of a 3pt mower but I have the tractor already which I use for other things and it didn't make sense to spend more on a riding mower when I can just add a deck to this one. After four mowings, I can vouch for the quality cut of this 3pt mower. When I'm finished with the yard, it looks every bit as good as the cut I get with dad's mower, which is excellent. And because it is five feet wide, it mows my lawn just as fast too.
If I'm careful and don't mind backing up a lot, I can mow fairly close to the house and around other obstacles but regardless, I still have to finish by bringing out the push mower and weed eater. Consequently, after trying that a couple of times and wasting a lot of time doing so, I've taken to just mowing as close around the obstacles as I can without slowing down and basically just use the mower for the wide open spaces. I then have my son finish up with the push mower; I knew I'd have to do that anyway but I wanted to see if I could get in close, it's just not worth the hassle with this mower. But I'm not overly disappointed about that; I get my part done in under an hour and it doesn't take long to push mow the rest; so all is good. If you have a lot of trees or other things to mow around, I'd take those into consideration for certain.
One advantage to having the mower out behind me while I ride high on the tractor is that I don't have to contend with dust getting all over me like I did on my dad's mower (side discharge). I think the rear discharge helps with that a lot too.
The things I mention above are mostly the good attributes of this mower. Here are the less than good aspects:
The manual isn't very detailed for the most part and not overly useful. The assembly instructions are seriously lacking but for someone who is good with tools, has some common sense and can work without a lot of guidance, you won't have any problems putting it together. I found the pictures of the mower in the manual, which showed it assembled, more useful than the assembly instructions. The manual could definitely use some work. For instance, I knew what kind of oil to put in the gear box but I looked several times in the manual to verify my own thoughts about the oil and could not find any reference to what type of oil to use; I don't recall if the type of grease was specified or not. The manual does do okay at pointing out the lube points. One caution on greasing the mower up initially; it takes a lot of grease, especially on the pulleys.
It probably took me an hour or maybe more to fully assemble the mower and lube it up. I then tried to hook it up to my tractor only to be disappointed that it wouldn't work with my quick hitch attachment. The lower 3pt hitch pins are just barely too wide for the quick hitch; that was probably the most disappointing thing to me. I may try to modify it to make it work later but for now I just removed the quick hitch.
The first time I powered it up, I noticed that at 540 rpms, something was squealing. At first I thought it was one of the pulleys or the gear box; it was dark and I didn't want to tear it up worse so I shut it down. When I checked it the next day, I realized it was only the drive-line guard on the mower vibrating. Below 540, it doesn't make a sound. I need to try to tighten the bolts or add some padding to stop that racket but I haven't done that yet.
One thing that worried me when I first saw the mower was the quality of the casters; or the lack there of I should say. They look very cheaply made and don't even have grease ports that I can tell. Before I even unpacked the mower, I noticed that the rubber on the wheels already had cuts in them from being poorly packaged. Well, my fears about the casters have come true; they are junk. After only four mowings, the rubber is already starting to come off of the casters and one caster completely broke down after the last mowing. I plan on trying to get it replaced on warranty but I'll probably look for different wheels or completely replacement casters for this mower. I don't figure any of the original four will be worth anything after a year of mowing.
Overall, the deck seems to be fairly well made. I wish it had anti-scalp rollers on it though.
I guess the final analysis is that I like the mower but I don't like the casters. If I can replace the casters without too much work and especially cash outlay, I will be happy with this mower. If the casters end up being hard to replace or cost too much to replace, well, I'll have an expensive piece of junk. Hopefully it will work out. I marked that I would recommend this product to a friend but that hinges on whether I can resolve the caster issue or not."
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What is your level of technical expertise?:
Home Handyman
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