OK, here goes one of my life's most embarrassing moments:0).....my father-in-law who has had a 72" Kubota Diesel ZTR(a $12,000 mower) for about 5 years goes with me to pick up my Gravely and take it to the house. When we got there he drove it off the trailer for me and told me:
"Start out VERY slow, maybe 1/3 throttle, drive it around the yard until you get a feel for the controls and practice changing directions(it's tricky to keep from leaving divets in the grass). You must learn to move one lever slightly forward and the other slightly backward AT THE SAME TIME. This keeps the tire(if you had not pulled the other lever backwards for reverse) from being stationary, therefore when the mower turns it spins on the same spot creating the divet/twirl in the grass which looks kinda bad. It'll take some time to get the feel for it."
So after about 15 minutes, I was getting "comfortable" with the controls and thought...."this bad boy goes 10mph, I wanna see how that feels"......BAD IDEA!!! I ended up hitting a 4" pcv pipe that sticks up about 4" out of the ground where I change my septic tank field lines, with the deck breaking the pcv pipe off at the ground......freaked me out and at that point I "froze up", looked up and was headed right towards my wife's 6 foot tall/200lb wishing well(and couldn't pull back). I hit that thing square and knocked it about 6 feet in the air. Significant damage to the wishing well(made out of landscape lumber) but because of the commercial build of my Gravely absolutely no evidence of damage to the mower aside from a couple of mars on the paint on the front deck, wheel casters and frame. I checked the deck and it was still perfectly leveled. Fortunately, my dealer gave me some Gravely touch-up red paint:0)
Again, that speaks volumes about how well built these ZTR's are........but I guess you can imagine how embarrassing that was in front of my father-in-law and how I felt about wrecking my brand new ZTR that was 15 minutes old:0) I'm just now getting where I can laugh about it...but believe me my whole family has had several bouts of rolling on the floor laughing just trying to visualize my experience since then(that would have made America's Funniest Videos.....or maybe a really good Gravely TV ad:0)
Soooooo, when you buy that first zero turn Lawn mower my advice to you is "start out VERY slow, maybe 1/3 throttle and practice until you get a good feel for the controls":0)
P.S.
The wife is still a little peeved about me ruining her 6 foot tall wishing well(the shake shingle roof is loose and the front kinda "hangs down where it hit the ground, and it's kinda "sitting on top of" the bottom two layers of 4x4 landscape timbers that came loose:0)
