zero-turn

Ready-to-roll. (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the dreaded and utterly reprehensible Nikon D100.)

And so begins another season of mowing lawn on the dreaded zero-turn.
“Dreaded” because my all-knowing macho blowhard brother-in-Boston, the ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, insists I am completely incapable of using it.
This despite my using it two seasons, and getting pretty good on it last year.
A “zero-turn” is a special lawn-mower design.
Unlike a lawn-tractor, it has individual actuation for each drivewheel, so it can be spun on a dime.
The individual drive-wheels are activated by tiller-bars, one for each side.
A lawn-tractor has to be driven all over to line up each cutting-swath.
A zero-turn can get just spun at the end of each cutting-swath, and back over the adjacent cutting-swath it goes.
To do that with a lawn-tractor you might have to spend 20 seconds or so lining it up. Those seconds add up.
As such, most lawn maintenance operators have switched to zero-turns. You see them out there boomin’-and-zoomin’.
At first the zero-turn design was just a commercial application. John Deere wanted almost 6,000 smackaroos.
But then the mower companies, e.g. Huskvarna, started doing residential applications: not as substantial as a commercial application, and nowhere near as costly.
I.e. a zero-turn application of the typical residential lawn-tractor.
So I bought one. Additionally, at 48 inches it cut a wider swath than my old rider (at 38 inches); plus it was much faster.
My Husky is a minimal zero-turn — I didn’t think I needed 20 horsepower or more.
It’s a Briggs & Stratton overhead-valve “Intek” V-twin engine of only 18 horsepower.
Sometimes the grass is high enough to stall it, but if that looks like it will be the case, I raise the cutting height.
A lot of last Spring was at 4&1/2-inches; normally I cut at 3&1/2-inches. Three inches is not the same as three inches on our small Honda mower. Three inches is too short; 3&1/2 about right.
My first year was a disaster.
It must have been assembled by the Friday afternoon crew, as it chewed up two spindle-shafts (out if three), and wouldn’t run.
The poor shop manager had to drag it back to his shop at least three times — maybe four.
One year guarantee.
It refused to run because the nearly invisible fuel-valve was partially closed, and once last year he had to drop everything when a front-tire went flat.
He had to change out the tire-tube (the nipple had been cut off); but got me back mowing within the hour.
Sure; suppose I had bought the thing at mighty Lowes.
“Here is your receipt. We’ll have it back to you in 20 years. We have to ship it to India.”
There also was a learning-curve. Ya don’t just drive it. I took it into a ditch once, and have mowed small trees.
But keep using it, and ya get the hang of it. —Plus it cut my mowing time in half.
Last year it went the entire season without a hitch (except that flat). —I think we have it nailed.

RE: “‘Old guy’ with the dreaded and utterly reprehensible Nikon D100.......” —My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston, who is 13 years younger than me, calls me “the old guy” as a put-down (I also am the oldest). I also am loudly excoriated by all my siblings for preferring a professional camera (like the Nikon D100) instead of a point-and-shoot. This is because I long ago sold photos to nationally published magazines.

The cutting rotors (blades) are on “spindle-shafts.”