Zero Turn Mowers Are They Any Good Advice Please

Zero Turn Mowers? Any Good? Advice Please.. Hi. This is my first posting on this forum...... I have been looking at getting a zero turn mower.. currently looking at mid range options in the Bobcat and Hustler range.. The two that seem to catch my eye and that will stretch my wallet AR the Bobcat XRZ Pro and the Hustler Fasttrack SDX..... they tend to come in 48", 52" and 60" deck sizes... but I am conceidering a 48" deck as I think that it will handle a wider range of tasks and as we are in the UK or for me Wales. I do seem to have to deal with wet grass quite often. So I don't want to be too greedy with the deck size. The Youtube videos shows them doing a great job in dealing with large lawns and very tall grass.. But as many of these videos are shot in America I can't find much that shows them dealing with wet grass. The addition of the Zeroturn style mower would be in addition to a Viking T6 42" collector tractor style unit I have that is hopeless a collecting or rear disposing of wet grass. It only handles dry grass. So the advice and feedback I am after from members of this forum who have used or owned these types of machines is: 1) Both Bodcat and Hustler look exactly the same apart from the colour. Is there any real difference or are they the same machine but branded differently? 2) Are they any good in the UK Enviroment? 3) How well do they handle wet grass? 4) Both brands do collector kits. Has anyone used them and are they any good. 5) Any reliability or known issues with them? 6) Anyone here have one and would be willing to share their experiences of owning or using them? I look forward to getting any advice people are able to give.

Replies

PRO

Seth Burgess December 25, 2016 at 9:15pm

The collectors will be utterly awful in the wet if it's a side discharge deck. Not worth even trying. Zero turns are best used for cut and drop wide area applicationns. Another one I'd look at is a Gianni Ferrari zero turn.
matt evans December 26, 2016 at 7:43am

I fancy one but I'm worried (and been warned) about the weight of the machine on the back axle.
- PRO
  
  Seth Burgess > matt evans December 26, 2016 at 12:43pm
  
  You can get some with '3' axles with rear trailing wheel (or two) that have much better ground pressure.
David Strong December 26, 2016 at 8:01am

Hi Jamie 
Just a few thoughts 
 
Can you get these machines onto the grass - we looked at these and have approx 10 - 12" high kerbstones so they wouldn't get up onto the grass. 
 
We find with side discharge rotary deck that if it's wet the grass just ends up in a line, so we've moved to rear discharge so the spread of the cut grass is more even. 
 
We've looked at these but never went ahead with purchasing one and are currently looking at out front John deeres and kubotas atm. 
 
Regarding the collector kits on these they look great but have heard they don't operate very well in the wet - but then again what is that good in the wet? 
 
Thanks
This reply was deleted.
- matt evans January 5, 2017 at 7:00am
  
  Thanks for this, I think I will stick to the scag walk behinds now.
  
  I follow a FB page called "Lawn Pros" based in America, they can't get enough of their zero turn rideon machines