How many hours do machines really last?

[TobyU]

I've never worked on that many commercial mowers but I've never seen anymore with over 4200 hours on it. That was an old one with an analog hour meter with the little wheel that spun like an old odometer on a car.
Most of the mowers that I've seen that are pretty hard worked start having some pretty major repairs in the 1200 to 1400 hour range but some will go up to 1800 or so.
Things like slipped valve guides where they will continue to mow for the whole rest of the day as best they can so instead of being able to fix it you have to replace the entire head.
Had to do that on a Kawasaki 2 years ago. It had 1,200 and something hours on it in a John Deere 50 inch or so chassis.
I think the highest Briggs V-Twin I've seen that wasn't a vanguard was either 1400 or 1600 hours.
That's well beyond what the average homeowner will ever get from machine because most of the time it'll be so many years until they can accumulate that many hours that when some needed repair comes up they will just decide to buy a new one.

The average person in my area only plus between 25 and 35 hours a year on any type of mower and most people have a 42 in front engine rider.
So if it's a zero turn the hours could be a little lower.
The fact is I have had tons of riders come in that are 12 to 15 years old it only have between 220 and 270 hours on them so you can do the math.

In this many years they're pretty beat up and they don't really think it's outrageous or uncalled for to need to buy a new machine.

I believe this is why on the newer machines a lot of the homeowner ones are no longer having the cheap little digital meter even though there's already a spot in the dash and sometimes a hole that they have to actually put a plug into when they delete it but I believe it's incriminating.
When a machine is 12 years old and an engineer transmission failure makes you decide to replace it you don't feel like you've gotten ripped off but when you look down and see it's only got 194 hours on it you really feel cheated!!

I would say some of those old skag walk behind mowers with the pistol grips and the drive belt on each side and the old Kawasaki singles what were they 420 or 460 maybe an FS 460??
I would say some of those machines have 5,000 to 10,000 hours on it but for the most part on the zero turns and stuff made in the past 20 years you'll be lucky to get 1200 to 1500 hours without it needing at least a hydro replaced or some major engine work or an engine transplant.

As Bert said, people really do bad things to these without knowing it

I tell people all the time and this is even for a simple little Craftsman 42-in mower and not a big expensive ZTR but "if it's mowing or just moving the speed has to be in the normal full speed operation position"
You do not know for 2 hours and get the thing up to full operating temperature and then turn off the blades and I look down to half speed or all the way to Lowes it will run and then drive the thing two or three hundred feet to park it or to put it on a trailer!!
This spikes the hydro temperature excessively because you just lowered the engine RPMs from around 3200 to 3500 down to around 1300 and the engine speed is directly related to how fast the little fans on top of the hydros are spinning.

Also, drive them like a Cadillac and like you don't want to spill your beer!

I literally had a guy pull up in front of my shop with a nice newer Ford truck and a gorgeous new enclosed trailer probably 16 ft long or more.
He had two bobcats on it and as he backed one off because he wanted me to look at it because it wasn't moving right like it had a weak hydro...
He backed it off of his trailer turn slightly to the left and then did a burnout and literally spun one of the tires.
I instantly thought...
I see why you have a hydro problem now.

These things should be driven like a Cadillac and you shouldn't tow or pull anything with them.
They are not tractors even if they have a hitch on the back or even if someone has welded a hitch on the back. They are made to cut grass.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Yes it is very very bad for the pump & motor units that are face plate type.
Not so bad for the side cam type ( Eatons )
The whole system requires the resistance provided by the oil squeezing out of the sides of the plates being lower than the resistance of the piston to pump the oil or drive the motor.
This is why the pumps have 1 more piston than the motor so the pump is always pumping more oil than motor can use

 

[aussielawny]

Yes it is very very bad for the pump & motor units that are face plate type.
Not so bad for the side cam type ( Eatons )
The whole system requires the resistance provided by the oil squeezing out of the sides of the plates being lower than the resistance of the piston to pump the oil or drive the motor.
This is why the pumps have 1 more piston than the motor so the pump is always pumping more oil than motor can use

Thanks mate.....it's only for the 10 seconds or so while reversing up the ramp but l'll stop doing it

 

[Hexa Fox]

My guesstimation from what I have seen is that with GOOD maintenance Briggs can go 1000 hrs, Kohlers maybe 2500 and I have seen some Kawasaki powered equipment with nearly 4000 hrs.

lmao Just guessing but thinking you may be a little bias here and be a fan of Kawasaki? Personally from what I have seen the Vanguards have less problems. It is one of the reasons I bought it. Kawasaki was my second choice. To clarify, I am not talking about the smaller consumer grade Briggs engines, I am talking about Briggs Vanguards.

Also wow this post exploded. I have been reading through the comments on my phone. A lot of really great feedback here, I appreciate it. So to be honest the only two things I have ever done to my transaxles is clean grass out of the fan and change the oil as well as the filter in them. I never thought about cleaning them off. I also remember seeing people saying to never wash commercial (or really any) equipment. I heard the argument that water is not a friend of equipment. I mention this because I saw a couple of you mention it. My OHV covers and some others parts of the engine are covered in dirt. I do try to wipe this off from time to time. I may start pressure washing it from time to time.

Also I am anal about taking care of my equipment. There are grease fittings on this thing that are almost literally hidden. The manual sucks for my machine. It does not tell you how many there are or where they are located. I usually grease it once or twice a year. I usually give things like the spindles around 15 pumps. Back when I was mowing a little more regularly I think I usually greased it three or more times a year.

So I have never discussed how many hours I have on my machine... I have always thought that something may be wrong with my hour meter. However, I am over 500 hours on it now and have had it since 2015. To be clear, I have mowed a lot of grass with this machine. The properties that I mow are between 0.75 and 2.00 acres and I would say my average yard is right around an acre or less. I have mowed about ten yards like this every year on average. I just picked up two people this year and I am right back at that number.

 

[Hexa Fox]

l've been doing this for years now Bert, my Grav Compact Pro has separate pumps/motors.....should l not be doing this? l'm fanatical about maintenance, l change the hydro oil & filter every 150 hrs

I guess if this is true I am screwed because I mow on steep hills that no one should be doing with a zero turn period. I see a lot of people using the Cub Cadet Synchro Steer (steering wheel) now. They are surprisingly stable on hills. I have a friend that uses that sucker like a Ventrac I swear.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Steep hills are not a big problem provided that the engine is running full speed
Running up steep slopes using engine speed to control the ground speed is the problem .
As for the steering wheel cub , yes they& the similar Toro are more stable on slopes because the front casters are controlled so they can not go sideways like other brands do .

 

[tombukt2]

I would say that 95% or more of people in the commercial mowing business change their oil regularly. I know a lot of people in the business and they are anal about it, as am I. I do not put that many hours on my machine anymore but I change the oil at least at the beginning of each season. I also change the transaxles fluid every few years or so too. If I was using it more often I would be doing it more often.

What you are talking about is residential homeowners. That is why manufacturers nowadays are sealing everything up and making it maintenance free. I think the new engines that have a filter prefilled with a quart of oil (or whatever) they are, are pretty moronic. However, if you can convince people to change those out I guess it is better than not doing anything at all. The are 'throw away' machines which I find ridiculous. You pay thousands of dollars for them and use them until they stop working and pretty much toss them or put "free" on them out by the curb. For the record I would never do this. I find it mind boggling that people do.

Anyway what I was sort of looking for here is "Hey I had/have a Ferris with the same setup and I am over 1,500 hours right now". Because people say these machines can easily get thousands of hours but I never see it. If you go look at classifieds for them they rarely have over 1,000 hours and I was wondering if it was because they are still relatively new machines or you are getting close to their failure rate.

I don't think that's true If you look on the auction sites all over the web especially the ones out in the middle of the country like in Nebraska and Ohio and places like that I see machines with 1100 hours plenty of them on there and actually the machines look like there many times pretty clean other than the normal rust around the deck surface rust seats that are well worn not necessarily ripped but completely flattened out things like that at these kind of hours spindles have been replaced generally speaking If not they're going to be getting replaced and short order I do all my own work I don't let anybody touch any of my equipment that's one of the main ways that things last a long time when you're paying a shop to do your work they're beating on things with hammers and all kinds of fun stuff We don't do that here most of the things that go out on these machines are the hydraulics especially the hydro gear stuff as these newfangled things that are small and compact and they're made to go about 800 hours or something like that maybe and then the cost of rebuilding is close to the cost of replacement usually I'm going to find replacements from third party vendors because many of these things interchange on many mowers. The complicated mowers are the ones with the separate pumps and wheel motors like the Parker systems which generally were thought to be heavier duty and better built then Parker got bought up by somebody or just generally cheaped out like most everything has and so now maybe not so much but you can look at all Cub cadet tanks and things like that and see a lot of those machines with 11 and $1,200 hours still running fine they're just not the latest and greatest and the shiniest paint just like the guy with the 50K truck to haul the equip.

 

[Cajun power]

a commercial grade machine is going to get heavy duty frequent hard use. As a matter of reality, these machines are generally designed with serviceability and reliability as top priority. But what this really means is that the machine must be maintained, cleaned, greased and adjusted and inspected often. So really, the "life" of these machines depend largely on how often and how WELL the machines is maintained. As some have commented there are certain does and don't's with any zero turn. Now, there are several ways to look at this...you can spend the high dollars for those high end machines and try to keep up on all the maintenance OR you can just buy a lower end commercial setup with the expectation that after say...500 hours, you are just going to buy another new. I know alot of commercial mowers who do just that. They look at the investment required for long term maintenance and just decide...nope...the math doesn't add up trying to stretch the life out of machine that is likely to get hard use and likely develop problems around the 500 hour mark...because the reality is that the higher end machines..parts are very expensive...and time consuming..and that means you are not making money mowing. So there is a balance and this is different for every commercial mower.

But of course there are exceptions to this...I have a 20 year old dixie chopper with generac engine and general hydro motor...It's a little tough to work on and maintain and the parts are not cheap...but it's a beast and it's my go to rough cut mini bush hog. it just does not quit. Made very very well and very dependable. I'll probably continue to stretch the life out with lots of preventative maintenance..because it is so dependable. And I only paid a thousand bucks for it ..used. The deck is bomb proof, the spindles are incredibly strong and it has these thick very strong short blades that axe through just about anything that is less than an inch in diameter. It's got over 1500 hours and still runs like a champ.

I realized that many of even the very best top end ztr's are so expensive to repair for parts and labor time, and the dependability is just not what I expected...So know I have what I consider a balanced strategy. I buy new mowers every two years...I sell the old gear, because the numbers show me it's not worth the time, the effort and the cost to try and keep them running. The upside to doing this is that you can still recoup alot of your investment money because the commercial grade mowers retain a nice chunk of value as long as they are maintained.
in the commercial mowing industry..one has to consider it as a business...and less about long term ownership.

just something to think about.

 

[TobyU]

Thanks mate.....it's only for the 10 seconds or so while reversing up the ramp but l'll stop doing it

It's not really about it only taking 10 seconds to do but more about the strain it puts on it if you do it abruptly and roughly instead of smoothly and if you lower the engine speed down after you're done cutting let's say and turn the blades off to even drive back to the ramp.
A lot of people do this and it's a very bad habit. You still have all the way to the machine and the way to the operator that you're moving but yet you have only about a third of the engine speed and much less cooling from lack of air flow because the fans aren't moving very quickly.

I always say if it's mowing or even just moving, the speed needs to be at full throttle cutting operating position.

 

[troverman]

...These things should be driven like a Cadillac and you shouldn't tow or pull anything with them.
They are not tractors even if they have a hitch on the back or even if someone has welded a hitch on the back. They are made to cut grass.

Your statement makes no sense. There are plenty of videos from Wright mowers talking about the 2" receiver hitch on the back of their ZXL and ZXT zero turn mowers. In the video, Wright clearly says they are rated to pull 500lbs but they have tested them to pull much more. Each hydro manufacturer specifies a torque rating and a load rating of their pump / motor or transaxle assembly. There are plenty of heavy-duty ZTRs with hitches rated to pull similar, and I wouldn't expect any ill effects from towing within the rated amount with the engine up to speed.