Best Hydrostatic Transmission???
- Thread starter Jimmy the Lock
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aussielawny
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Agreed, my 2015 Gravely compact pro is a tank; the new ones have transaxles now instead of pumps/motors......seems a downgrade to me
Electric cars have 80% more problems than traditional gas according to consumer reports. Avis is selling g off 21,000 of its EV’s due to high maintenance costs and higher accident rates.
Don’t be so sure that an electric mower will be lower maintenance.
I would also look at the rest of the mower too. There is a helluva lot more going on than transmission. Look at the front pivots and wheel bearings. Some don’t even have bearings or if they do they aren't sealed. I bought a used Kubota ZT 6 years ago because it had the 3100 series trans. Made sense, axles looked bigger and before. However the rest of the mower has fallen short. Tab welded to the frame for the deck mount broke ( warranty covered it). Was a bad weld. Wheel bearings and deck bearings seemed to be of poor quality. I have upgraded these items so should last fingers crossed. Also the plastic intake manifold on the Briggs engine warped and leaked. The good news I can get parts and fix it myself. It took weeks to weld that tab on…..could have done that myself too as their “certified welder” was no better than I.
Don’t fixate on one thing or you could be disappointed. Last but not least I would get a main stream brand as parts are more likely to be available in the future. My BIL runs a lawn mowing business in FL and finds the X-mark to be the most reliable.
Don’t fixate on one thing or you could be disappointed. Last but not least I would get a main stream brand as parts are more likely to be available in the future. My BIL runs a lawn mowing business in FL and finds the X-mark to be the most reliable.
Sure, but those things aren't deal-breakers. This is why I always tell people the deal breakers are engine and transmissions.
These are what prompt someone with an 8:10 or 12-year-old mower to buy a new one because most people can't replace those themselves and the price to have them replaced and even buy them is very cost prohibitive.
A lot more people can rig up a broken weld on a frame or a front wheel etc or even welded up better than factory.
I wouldn't have a battery powered riding lawn mower or push mower if you gave it to me!
I would sell it and use one of my good older gasoline powered mowers or buy a new one if I had to but I'd likely buy a nice used one.
It is absurd what they've done to us with the prices.
Just two years ago you can walk in and buy a Cub cadet at home Depot for 1599 at the beginning of the season.
By the end of the season they didn't have any and there were three three battery powered ones sitting there the exact same 42-in cut just battery powered instead of a gasoline engine..
They were $4,000!
They're going to have to do a lot better than that and make the prices the same or a lot cheaper if they're going to have me by their battery powered items that every time I use them I have to sacrifice things that are important.
See, the pro battery crowd will always say things like they don't have to sacrifice hearing a loud engine running or smelling the fumes or polluting etc but those aren't a sacrifice because that is standard operating procedure and I'm used to all of that.
The sacrifice is the fact that it doesn't have as much power on most of these mowers especially the smaller walk behind ones and they don't have much time capacity either.
I don't ever have to stop cutting for the day or for the 4 hours or for the hour or anything like that when I'm using my zero turn.
I can cut for hours!
If I do need to cut longer than what the twin tanks will carry me and I think I'm getting low, I simply ride back over to my gas can and fill it back up and NO, I don't turn it off when I do this.
That's just one more wasteful wear and tear start on the starting motor and one more temperature spike for the engine when you turn it off.
Point is, I can mow indefinitely.
I could probably start my zero turn and ride it to California.
Maybe we should have a challenge and let somebody with a lot of time and a point to prove do this just to show it to be done..
It would be a slow process but there are enough gas stations in this country especially on the old state routes that you could probably make it from town to town with probably no more than a Jerry can or two.
Try this with a battery powered mower.....
Regardless, what they did though was come out with this huge price for this 42 inch battery powered mower and then the very next year which I predicted 100%...they roll the gasoline mowers back out and they were almost $1,000 more. In fact, some are a thousand more than the same models were just a couple of years ago.
It's manipulation at its finest.
A friend bought one of those $4,000 lectric mowers. Battery failed after just over a year. New battery over $1,500. The net net of it all is the lectric generates more greenhouse gases if you factor in the mining of the minerals for the batteries and the failure rates.I wouldn't have a battery powered riding lawn mower or push mower if you gave it to me!
I would sell it and use one of my good older gasoline powered mowers or buy a new one if I had to but I'd likely buy a nice used one.
It is absurd what they've done to us with the prices.
Just two years ago you can walk in and buy a Cub cadet at home Depot for 1599 at the beginning of the season.
By the end of the season they didn't have any and there were three three battery powered ones sitting there the exact same 42-in cut just battery powered instead of a gasoline engine..
They were $4,000!
They're going to have to do a lot better than that and make the prices the same or a lot cheaper if they're going to have me by their battery powered items that every time I use them I have to sacrifice things that are important.
See, the pro battery crowd will always say things like they don't have to sacrifice hearing a loud engine running or smelling the fumes or polluting etc but those aren't a sacrifice because that is standard operating procedure and I'm used to all of that.
The sacrifice is the fact that it doesn't have as much power on most of these mowers especially the smaller walk behind ones and they don't have much time capacity either.
I don't ever have to stop cutting for the day or for the 4 hours or for the hour or anything like that when I'm using my zero turn.
I can cut for hours!
If I do need to cut longer than what the twin tanks will carry me and I think I'm getting low, I simply ride back over to my gas can and fill it back up and NO, I don't turn it off when I do this.
That's just one more wasteful wear and tear start on the starting motor and one more temperature spike for the engine when you turn it off.
Point is, I can mow indefinitely.
I could probably start my zero turn and ride it to California.
Maybe we should have a challenge and let somebody with a lot of time and a point to prove do this just to show it to be done..
It would be a slow process but there are enough gas stations in this country especially on the old state routes that you could probably make it from town to town with probably no more than a Jerry can or two.
Try this with a battery powered mower.....
Regardless, what they did though was come out with this huge price for this 42 inch battery powered mower and then the very next year which I predicted 100%...they roll the gasoline mowers back out and they were almost $1,000 more. In fact, some are a thousand more than the same models were just a couple of years ago.
It's manipulation at its finest.
I’m not against lectric, just let the people decide. Actually have a Milwaukee 18v mower that works well. Wouldn’t pay the retail price they ask but found it on fake book market place for half the retail price. Just use it for trimming, actually the wife does. She prefers the 15 yr old gas mower LOL.
Yes, different strokes for different folks and different power sources for different uses.
Too many people get hung up on and all are none situation I want to push their ideas on to everybody.
I was super excited back in the '80s when they rechargeable drills came out even though the first ones were quite lackluster until you got into Milwaukee and makita's..
They quickly became just as strong as your corded drills but the convenience of not needing the cord.
Sure, it's annoying when you're doing something over a long period of time and you have to have three batteries to cycle them through the charger so you can go indefinitely but the convenience outweighs the aggravation most of the time.
Try cutting a vehicle in half though with a rechargeable sawzall. It just doesn't cut it, pun intended.
I did this a couple of years ago and I thought I could pull it off with my three battery packs and my Diablo blade but I ended up going in the shed and getting the harbor freight plug in sawzall.
Also back in the 80s when the toy RC cars were popular, I hated the battery powered once even though I quickly got into rechargeable batteries and then the better ones on the race circuit had rechargeable packs.
They even had fast chargers that charge them so quickly it would often damage the cells or kill the battery pack because they were so hot you could barely touch them because it was all about keeping these cars on the little race track circuits in the parking lot of hobby stores etc.
I quickly decided that gas was the way to go because you had full power all the time!
I also had some size 30 and size 60 helicopters that had small engines in them that ran on that expensive stuff from the hobby store.
Now, everybody wants everything to be battery powered or electric and some things just don't work as well.
Back to cars, there are certain things that will be far more convenient with a battery powered car.
Not that they all do this now but they are all capable of it, you can have resistance heating and get the temperature for your defroster up to temperature in about 5 seconds!
People with Tesla's normally don't worry about this because they leave them plugged in at night so they put them into warm up mode and the car warms up everything depending on your settings I assume, without draining any of your battery because you unplug it and then leave.
I don't really need all of that and then again we've had remote starts on cars that were aftermarket add-ons for decades and then around 2005 to 8 most cars started coming from the factory with an option of remote start so there's that.
That waste fuel though and even if you don't care about that, it does waste range that you will have to go to the station sooner to get more gas whereas having the vehicle plugged in in your garage or plugged in at home while it's warming up doesn't decrease your range at all because you're still plugged in.
I do wonder about how many watts a Tesla pools in a warm up mode and I'm guessing it's probably around 800 to 1400 but I could be way off.
I've always found it quite annoying in the winter time that our vehicles take so long to warm up.
Even if the windows are clear of snow etc, even with heated seats, and now they have heated steering wheels, it's still cold when you get in and the fog etc on the windows can be annoying and there is no heat blowing out of the vents for a good three or four minutes.
This should easily be conquered with a battery powered car but my guess is they won't go nearly as far as I would giving it resistance heating comparable to the electric heating for backup in a heat pump system or just an electric air handler in your home where you literally have hot air coming out 5 to 8 seconds after the buttons pressed.
I understand that resistance heating pulls one of the highest amounts of battery power but doesn't matter when you're still plugged in and it's a price I'd be willing to pay for under a minute or so to get it comfortable.
bertsmobile1
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The engineer in me loves the idea of electric powered anything as they are just so energy efficient
When a reliable battery is found that does not literally cost the earth to make then I would probably buy some.
However as a planet saver they are a hoax.
IF you really wanted to save the planet, then replace your entire roof with solar cells and install some wind walls in place of privacy screens & wind breaks .
The maths is dead simple
Mowers make up about 0.002 % of the USA's petrochemically derived green house gasses and think that figure was for everything , mowers, blowers, trimers, saws & home generators
Petrochemical green house gasses are around 25% of the USA's total green house gasses and that includes trucks , trains & boats, but not aircraft for some strange reason .
So mowers & the like will reduce the problem by 0.0005 % which would equate to around the number of beer farts
Household electricity accounts for around 33%
So where would yu start to attack the problem if you waned to get some useful results ?
When a reliable battery is found that does not literally cost the earth to make then I would probably buy some.
However as a planet saver they are a hoax.
IF you really wanted to save the planet, then replace your entire roof with solar cells and install some wind walls in place of privacy screens & wind breaks .
The maths is dead simple
Mowers make up about 0.002 % of the USA's petrochemically derived green house gasses and think that figure was for everything , mowers, blowers, trimers, saws & home generators
Petrochemical green house gasses are around 25% of the USA's total green house gasses and that includes trucks , trains & boats, but not aircraft for some strange reason .
So mowers & the like will reduce the problem by 0.0005 % which would equate to around the number of beer farts
Household electricity accounts for around 33%
So where would yu start to attack the problem if you waned to get some useful results ?
The engineer in me is far outweighed by the mechanical inclination and that efficiency and many of the theoretical advantages are outweighed by real-world experience.
I will always relate my experience with RC cars in the late 70s and early '80s.
They had cheap toy ones and then they had slightly better toy ones that all ran on batteries and you could use Nikes at the time to replace them and then some of them later on had rechargeable battery packs.
Then you had the actual RC circuit race cars which you would consider a professional style which ran on fast charging packs which were much better.
Nothing was as exciting to me as gasoline powered RC cars.
I just don't like things that have a fairly short duration and I don't like things that start out being nice and powerful and doing something one way but then wane off and get weaker and/or a little bit fairly quickly and then slowly degrade ending up with a harsh and quick drop off.
I have always preferred the ones that are full power all the time and can be made for a longer time as long as you supply them with enough fuel.