Review By : sawdust on 01/16/2007
Price Paid : $3,600.00
Years of Use : 2+ Years
Implements : Snow blade, 2 bag bagger, suitcase weights
Purchased From : Darryl's
Strengths Used year round, mowing, snow plowing the driveway, plus plowing our road occasionally. Also light grading of a 1 mile long dirt road, road repair work with the blade.
No problems moving up to 6 inch snows (more if light snow) with the weights plus tire chains. (turf tires)
Gator blades work nicely for mulching.
Weaknesses High amount of front wheel scrub when turning, tears up the lawn.
When the bagger is on or the suitcase weights are installed, I cannot pull our little trailer when I need to do so - a major irritant if you just want to move something quickly.
Poor fit and finish. In order to put the snowblade on, you need to loosen the control arm for the blade, as it sits directly on top of the necessary bolts. Then you need to loosen another smaller bolt to allow its frame to flex enough to fit in place. Plus, two bolt holes for the blade were drilled in the wrong place (approx 1/16 inch off), making it difficult to install. This I had to "adjust" with a grinder.
The (cheap) installed battery died within 6 months. It was not strong enough to start during an upstate NY winter. Replaced with a better one, no problems since.
Front tires needed tubes immediately.
Backing up kills the blade rotation. You then need to turn the switch off and on again to restart it. I'll bet the switch/clutch dies in another year or so, given the number of cycles it gets.
Overall No reliability problems so far. (120 hours logged)
It handles the hills on our 1 acre of lawn well enough (approximately a 30% grade in three spots, with an 8-10 foot climb) though the turf tires will often slip a bit when wet on those hills.
I would probably not buy this machine again.
Parts : 9 Performance : 5
Ease of Use : 4 Financing :
Reliability : 9 Overall : 6