Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire time for a new lawn tractor

Had two of the Craftsman lawn tractors sitting around here forever, both appeared to have had very little use., one is 22hp two blade the other a 27hp 3 blade.

They came with different houses I'v bought and sold over the years, I have a lawn service that does my mowing work so I've never used them.

Two weeks ago I gave the 27hp tractor to a neighbor kid, he turned it into a speed buggy by reversing the two drive pulleys, he's got it doing like 40 mph.

I wanted the 22hp gone as well so I checked it out, starts right up and runs fine, one blade had some wobble to it and I found it to be a broken deck spindle.

I ordered one from Amazon last Saturday night for $23, 18 hours later on Sunday afternoon it was here.

Took the old spindle off last night and installed the new one this morning.



Wanted to try it out and took off bombing out on the north 40 cutting along the shoreline, it'd grown up pretty good and my lawn guy avoids it.

Got about as far from the house as I could get and run it outta gas, so here I sit, posting meaningless babble on the Fire.

Nothing but mixed on hand, dumped every drop I had in motorcycles, boats and generators over the last couple weeks.

Now I gotta go clean into town just for fuel 🤨

The mower did fine, nuttin wrong with those old Craftsmans.

The 99 model Craftsman we just gave away was still running fine, 18hp single cylinder B&S

My 17 year old Craftsman lost the transaxle and replacements aren't available any more. So, it's time for a fresh one. In this area, there are 3 brands available that are made in the US: Cub Cadet, JD, and Husqvarna. Thanks to my wife's knee surgery a couple weeks ago, my budget is limited to $2500 to $3000. I'd prefer a ZT for mowing but it also has to pull my tow-behind rototiller so I'm limited to a tractor type.
My Craftsman was a heavy duty garden tractor with 23" rear wheels, 1" axles, and a heavy duty frame for attachments. Most of them have 20" wheels and lighter frames until you get way above my budget. I have a dozer blade for it and have used it to plow a lot of snow. I don't need that any more, though, as I have a blade on my Polaris RZR.
It has a 54" deck which has always been a bit too wide for my orchard. This time I'll go with 46 to 48".

Cub uses mostly Kohler engines. My experience with Kohler is that they're hard to beat. They use the Commander version with the cast iron cylinders. Cubs are heavy. They'll run 150 to 200lb more than the other brands in the same class. Cub has a 3 year warranty on the drive train, 5 on the frame and body, and lifetime on the deck if you get a fabricated one.

JD lists all their engines as OEM. From what I can tell, those could be Briggs, maybe Kawasaki, or maybe something else. They don't make their own engines for mowers in that price range. They make train loads of them for the Home Depot market. They aren't up to the the standards of real tractors. They have the shortest warranty of any of them - 2 years or 120 hours.

Husky uses Briggs and Kawasaki engines. They made my old Craftsman and it was great. They have a 3 year limited warranty. I'm not sure what's included.

All of them have a limited slip axle available starting at $4000 but I really don't need that any more since I don't plow snow with it any more.

I had other uses planned for the money, but the grass is getting tall. I really didn't want to do this right now.

If I were buying it would have a Kawasaki regardless of mower brand.

And yes there are mowers made by big names for the box stores. Go to an actual dealer and get a better product.

Good thing I bought a massive x700 series from a dealership then, I guess.

I have a Cub XT2 22 horse. Bought it at the beginning of 2017 because the 1995 “real” Cub my father gave me was falling apart under me. It has the 22-horse Kohler and a 42” deck, which I picked because I have a bunch of tight spots to go through, and it just makes it. Belt drive and of course, a belt-driven deck. A couple of years ago I bought their quick-mount front blade and chains for pushing snow and because I needed to redo the gravel in my driveway. I spread 15 tons of #57 (?) with that blade, which is light-duty, but does okay if you don’t dig too deep, which will make it flip. Same for snow. I was given a tilting drop-gate trailer, but most of my hauling is in a Jet Sled I bought for deer hunting. Works great and is much simpler to use than the trailer.

Very pleased so far. Have performed minimal maintenance and had no serious trouble. For mowing, snow removal, and dragging stuff around the yard, it’s perfect, and a ZTR, a decent one anyway, would be a waste of money for me and less useful. My neighbor keeps buying cheap ZTRs and replacing them.

My Cub was $2k, and last I looked they were about $2500.