My mower was delivered today and I did my first cut with it. I bought a Craftsman T210 with 36 hours on it for $800. I could have popped for whatever. But in the end, I don't think the value is there for a new mower for me. The prices are pretty wild. I am cutting a flat, half acre of residential yard. I am not tending a pasture or mowing commercially and I had to get real with myself that a new Cub is not worth over 4x the cost of this Craftsman for me. Maybe I blew it. Maybe not. Anytime you're dealing with machinery there's always the possibility for misery. However, if I get four years of use out of it, that's $200 a year for lawn care. If not, $800 is not a meaningful amount of money to me and I'll take it as lesson learned.
The T210 is kind of a cool little mower. There's alot of identical components between the Cub and the Craftsman since they're both MTD. Both originate with a 3 year warranty. The tight turn 5 inch turn radius is really cool, I mow around a lot of stuff and this feature helped me save a good deal of time cutting today. I'm pretty satisfied with my decision at this point. The little Kohler 18 hp 5400 seems to run pretty good. It cuts good. I plan to take good care of it.
Thanks all for your input. I enjoy hearing different perspectives, you've all earned your opinions through life experiences and I respect and consider all of them.
