Our 2017 Cub Cadet RZT-S zero turn mower is experiencing a sudden loss of rear wheel traction following a mower deck mishap. The mower was working fine when we accidentally sucked a large plastic trash bag into the mower blades, which abruptly locked everything up. We shut the engine off immediately. After cutting the shredded bag out and freeing the blades, we restarted the engine. The deck engages and cuts properly with no new vibration or shimmy. Unfortunately, now the rear wheels tend to spin when making a hard turn or attempting to go up even a slight incline. It acts like the tire has worn tread in wet grass, but the tires are not that old and they were working fine before the plastic bag problem. It has standard NHS tire tread with 60 hours of use since 2017; the tread is still in good condition. Shifting driver weight over spinning wheel only helps a little. We experimented with tire pressure, thinking that that might be the issue. Tried bleeding air to make soft, then aired up to recommended psi (used special low pressure gauge). No improvement. We also tried maneuvering up hill with mower deck disengaged thinking that a damaged deck drive might somehow be sapping torque from the wheel drive, but one or the other wheel still slips. This machine has separate deck and wheel drive belts anyway. The mower also tends to plow straight ahead when you steer hard left or right on level ground, acting like the front tire pressure is too high and too much weight aft. To be clear, there is no problem with the power to wheels connection; it moves forward and reverse. Could the impact to mower blades somehow have caused damage to the limited slip differential drive system?
Does anyone have suggestions on how to get the machine back to normal?
