Down to the grasses roots. Lawn mower recomendations

I had an older HRX that I replaced with a newer metal decked Honda. I replaced it after the 1988 model just needed too much: recoil spring broke, hard to start, and I had some trans issues.

I never had any of the "non-repairable" problems that people complain about. I just had a spring break, and then had an issue with the cable ends for speed selection and drive engagement. I actually fixed it in about 30 min.

I splurged for the new machine just to have something more reliable after I started getting the lawn treated.

psteav wrote:

curtis73 wrote: All of them since about 2008 conform to the new EPA regs and they will all have carb issues with ethanol fuels. The higher end hondas use a hydraulic drive. The belt drives a small pump which hydrostats the axle. Its failure prone and $230 to replace. All of them will have the same cable/drive things go wrong.

Curtis- any preventative maintenance that can be done to keep the transmission alive on these?

None that I know of. The pump gears are plastic and they just shear off every few years. No individual parts available, either, just the whole axle assembly.

I tried fixing one once. I dumped out the old fluid, spun the input shaft with a drill, flushed, refilled, etc. No dice. So I took it apart. Its kinda like a swiss watch in there. The plastic gears had just worn off to the nub.

I have a smaller city lawn, unsure on acreage or square footage but probably 20 minutes to do it all with fiddly borders and things with a push mower. I don't own a mower, just moved from an apartment so I got a 40v Ryobi battery mower and it is pretty awesome, lightweight and does the whole thing on like 3/4 of one battery. I work odd hours so now I can mow early or late without annoying neighbors.

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

spitfirebill wrote: For $20 to cut that lawn, your daughter should provide the mower.

I'm guessing economics are a bit different here to there then. It would cost way more than that to get a 'service' to do it, but I agree the spousal unit agreed to too high a rate.

I must be unbearably mean. If my kid cuts the grass, I feed him dinner and give him a place to sleep.

I was making $20 per lawn 20 years ago. Surprised you guys think that's exorbitant.

I had a slightly negative Honda experience. I bought a Toro push mower from Sam's Club. It's been in the shop twice for starting issues, and now it is having some sort of regulator problem where it hunts up and down for idle. It also needs a new blade. I was going to keep using it till dead, but decided to just spend money on the easy button, at the risk of losing my GRM card.

I bought a dual battery mower with a 20" deck. I'd always hated the idea of battery electric mowers, but my introduction to them had been through lead acid. This thing makes hardly any noise, is super smooth and light. It's really pleasant to use.

I have an Ariens LM21. It's built like my old Mercedes W126, which is to say, it's sturdy. Ariens has two lines of walk-behind mowers--a less expensive line that's no better than anything else on the market, and the "Classic" series LM21, built to last decades. THAT's the one to get. Mine has the Kawasaki engine, and it's been great for the last five years.