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I started mowing in the 70’s at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club and have been pretty much doing the same kind of work since then. My go to Lawn Tractor is the John Deere 455. Made in America none of that Chinese crap. I have a 60” deck and a 47” Single Stage Snowblower. The old Simplicity mowers were good stuff but now they are plastic crap. Really even Toro has become total crap. My advice go on the internet find an 90’s or earlier John Deere, even Craftsman or Simplicity or Toro Areins, and restore them. Do not ever put thick heavy duty blades on a mower. First time you hit something major that the frost pushed up during the winter it will wreck a spindle, or worse yet a gear box. Use if possible cheap flexible ones. Easier to straighten a blade then to find a spindle. I’d like to find some titanium ones does anybody know where a person could find any? One of my zeroturns at work is a Prowler. Made in the USA but engineering of it sucks.

:welcome:

Welcome to the forum!

I'm going to move this thread over to our John Deere section.

I could not agree with you more. Most everything in any category is junk now-a-days. Whether it's your washing machine, your iron, your car, pick-up, toilet. computer, smart phone. The list could stretch into many areas, tools could be an exception (kind of rethinking that). But you could also ask, "How did we get here?" I own and operate 5 Economy Power King tractors. I have a lot of implements for gardening, snow removal, lawn care, digging, hauling, cutting, etc. These tractors came into existence in late 1946 or 47 and failed because of top executive/owners mismanagement of funds and sell-outs, until the final buy-out in the mid 90's. They are a miniature farm tractor. All gear drive train, no belts, a real clutch, t.o. bearing and pressure plate, Kohler, B&S, Wisconsin, none of that Jap and Chi-com garbage. My oldest turned 47 this year and I have no doubt he will get passed on to another owner to go another 50 years when I'm gone. We are all so hell-bent on "cheap". That is what sold the American soul out to the foreign market. I'm a Trump supporter and backer and believer because of that very thing, in part. Another point to be made is that there are exceptions to almost everything. Up is up, down is down, but what is lateral?

You lost me on "cheap flexible blades"....

Lawn/garden tractors or zero turns it usually depends much on what models you buy. If you buy the cheaper entry level models that's generally what you get.
I have a commercial grade Hustler Super Z zero turn. Built like a tank IMO.

RustyAllen said:

... tools could be an exception (kind of rethinking that). ...

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Tools aren't any different. The Sparta ratchet that was given to me, new, in 1966, is as good or better than anything you can buy today and it was the bottom of the barrel back then.

American consumers aren't interested in quality. Not in the least.

cpurvis said:

Tools aren't any different. The Sparta ratchet that was given to me, new, in 1966, is as good or better than anything you can buy today and it was the bottom of the barrel back then.

American consumers aren't interested in quality. Not in the least.

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You nailed it. Price is everything and when it breaks before it's time, they whine. The other thing about most American consumers is, one, they never read an owners manual and they never bother to maintain anything. Most consumers don't have any idea what a grease gun or oil can is and don't care. They take their vehicles to the 10 minute oil change place for service, drive on under inflated tires and are happily ignorant.

SidecarFlip said:

You nailed it. Price is everything and when it breaks before it's time, they whine. The other thing about most American consumers is, one, they never read an owners manual and they never bother to maintain anything. Most consumers don't have any idea what a grease gun or oil can is and don't care. They take their vehicles to the 10 minute oil change place for service, drive on under inflated tires and are happily ignorant.

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part of the "FREE MARKET" philosophy assumes that the market is INFORMED and you will note al of the scandals when a company does not disclose information to the stock market.
The same applies to everything from tissue paper to tanks.
However that requires the MARKET ( buying public ) having the base knowledge to properly evaluate what is being offered to them.
When if comes to mechanical things like tools & mowers, this capacity was lost in the 60's when education shifted from understanding why to parroting the right answers to get a piece of paper.
manufacturing technical advances from WWII technologies started to filter through to domestic goods so they became much more difficult to compare & evaluate at the very time declining education levels made it more difficult.

Add to that the massive propaganda machine from WWII turned their skills to selling the public goods they did not need nor want and they are very good at doing it.
The most successful companies ( Coke a Cola is the perfect example ) spent more on advertising than they did on product research.
We all got sold a dream, the totally fake nuclear family concept was introduced so we would spend more of our money buying a house we did not need , external health care & child minding, cars & lots of labour saving devices that were poorly made because the home owners were stretched to their financial limits paying for the house that 20 years earlier would have been a 2 room extension to the family home.
We built suburbs on small blocks so extending the home to accomodate the extended family was impossible thus perpetuating the stupidity.

The house I was born into had 3 generations living in it and 4 generations just before my grandfather died.
Thus there were 4 males and 6 younger ones available to to do the ground care of the 1/2 acre, tend to the lawn, orchard & veggie garden.
We had no money but we had a good life, much better than now when there are 2 of us to both work & tend our 1/4 acre.
Washing with the manual TrayWay washing machine took an entire day but there was granny, mum, auntie & 4 daughters to share the work.
Because they were all involved with the washing, they all ended up being able to evaluate what they wanted in a washing machine and funny enough we all have large front loading machines .
Same when the niece was born, granny ( who had done it before 6 times ) mum & auntie ( who had both done it 4 times before ) available 24/7 to assist with the raising.

Now days , Bill & Betty who have never fixed a vehicle, mowed a lawn, planted a garden, washed cloths or cooked a meal fall head over heels in " love" race out get married & buy a house the have to fill it full of stuff to "make their life easier"
They have no ides how to evaluate what is on the market or even decide if they need it but they buy it cause the neighbours ( who they never speak to) have one so they MUST need on as well thus the cheaper it is, the better it must be.

I may be a victim of it myself, but I'm thinking not. When education stopped and indoctrination began, and we've had that going on for some time now, is when the big, steep decline occurred. I'm hesitant to say all are affected by it, because it was definitely going on when I finished high school. The most indoctrinated products seemed to be the college educated idiot. Spit them out with no future to grab on to after the institutions of higher learning raped them out of 50 grand per year. That doesn't matter so long as there was some leftist, socialist, communist, community organizing, pot smoker professing them. By the way, I'm really veering off the beaten path when it comes to discussing junk equipment. I do believe it's background, though. If we didn't have some egg-head, who never worked a day in his life, designing a piece of equipment, that will never be used by him, it would be a terrific help.

More true than you think.
Way back the people on the shop floor who not only used the product but made it as well were involved in the design & improvement.

Now days we have college educated "designers" designing things that do not work because they have never been forced to use them.
Much like university educated managers who have never worked under a manager and would be challenged to properly manage a bush dunny.
The last new design the local push mower company (Victa) came out with was designed by a professional designing company.
Look up the Tornado, a total dissaster. not only did it rust while on the show room floor but the handle bar design caused it to violently bounce around from side to side when actually cutting grass.
A hurried reworking had them fitting the handlebars from the previous model.
My partners favourite bitch was all of the kitchen devices with sharp internal corners that are impossible to clean.
We have bought a few over the years but mainly we use the 1962 Kenwood Chief and some of it's attachments when I can repair them.

But what really kills me is all of the people who come here asking what is the best ride on under $ 1000, as if there possibly could be one that was just acceptiable under $ 2000.