Buying Advice LTR180 looking for help pretty please!

[silu]

Hello everyone. I'm hoping someone can give me some sound advice about the LTR180. I bought a 2nd hand one from a John Deere dealership last year for ｣1600 + VAT. I was pleased with it for a SHORT time.! For some unknown reason (well husband isn't owning up to hitting anything) the mower when engaged to cut vibrated violently and wouldn't cut. Got the JD mechanic out and he said the timing belt was out, so fixed it at a cost!!!! Next time the machine was used it did the same thing. Mechanic out AGAIN and this time we were certain we hadn't hit anything and blades were perfect which confirmed not our fault. Fixed again and machine worked for about another 2 weeks then bingo timing belt again. Chief mechanic came out and found NOTHING wrong...not helpful. After a huge argument dealership took the machine back we got a refund but were still out of pocket by about ｣600 for the repair visits.:confused2:
Question, are LTR180s very prone to have timing belt issues? We have about 1 1/2 acres of garden and roughly half of that is grass. The grass isn't bowling green standard by any means but it doesn't have big boulders lying about on it either.. Another LTR180 has appeared for sale privately (could be the 1 we sent back!!!!!) and I could be interested in buying it IF the machine isn't like the 1 we bought before. I currently have a beloved Wheelhorse C125 (Betsie who we have had for about 30 years! )but her deck is full of holes and altho she still goes just , she is economically not worth repairing and getting another deck for.Hope someone can give me an idea if I'm daft to try again with the same model. Thank you very much for your time.

 

[reynoldston]

The John Deere's I have been working on are older and didn't have a timing belt. This is the first time I have hear of such a thing, but I do see a timing belt in the parts manual. What are the timing belts doing slipping or breaking? I would say not knowing the tractor, that you have a mechanic problem not a mower problem. I don't know about Scotland but in the US any dealer that amounts to anything will stand behind its repairs.

 

[silu]

The John Deere's I have been working on are older and didn't have a timing belt. This is the first time I have hear of such a thing, but I do see a timing belt in the parts manual. What are the timing belts doing slipping or breaking? I would say not knowing the tractor, that you have a mechanic problem not a mower problem. I don't know about Scotland but in the US any dealer that amounts to anything will stand behind its repairs.

Thank you very much for bothering to reply. The problem with the machine was that the blades were hitting each other, the vibration and noise was amazing for a small machine! I'm no expert on mowers but on seeing the deck when the mechanic came to "fix" it, the blades are designed to move very close together and to a lay person it looked as tho it wouldn't take much to make them clash together. BUT I keep asking myself why a highly regarded brand would design a machine which was so prone to a problem AND the LTR 180 was manufactured for many years and therefore a well regarded machine. Perhaps they are only suitable for "bowling green" type lawns which mine is not, short meadow! I could understand more if I'd been trying to mow a rough field but that was not the case. I was purple with rage at the attitude of the dealer...terrible and tried blaming us when it wasn't our fault. The dealership has won countless awards for being the top JD dealership in Scotland (maybe UK) and have many council accounts and probably have St Andrews golf course on their books too as very close by. However we found them terrible...maybe because we didn't buy a new machine and don't have ｣1,000,000s to spent!!! Maybe the mower had been bent by the previous owners and the damage wasn't apparent but still amazed their top mechanic couldn't tell us why the problem kept occurring!
Like your photo, we had over 3ft of snow last winter which was "interesting". This winter we haven't even had a flake of snow, think this is why our country doesn't cope very well when we have a hard winter...we never know what we're going to get.Preying we continue with no "white stuff", we have livestock and trying to keep them happy with mountains of snow wasn't easy! Thanks again for trying to help. IF the LTR180 for sale doesn't have the same fault then it would be a good machine for us. Do I risk it?.....".Once bitten twice shy" is ringing in my ears and if we had problems with this 1 we'd have no come back as this 1 is a private sale. If I could afford to buy a JD x300r then I would go for 1 of those but pricey.

 

[reynoldston]

I really don't know what to tell you about a bad dealer and yes we have them here in this country also. I think if I had your problem I would not buy another John Deere and I surly would keep away from the bad dealer and a LTR180. You sound like you had good luck with your Wheel Horse so why not look at a Toro. I had a problem with my last Chevrolet car and have owned Chevrolet all my life. On top of that I was a Chevrolet mechanic for 25 years. I bought a Toyota car and will never own a Chevrolet again. For some reason these big company get a big name and just the heck with the small man. They keep it up and it will catch up with them. I live by a big company called Kodak and they just filed for bankruptcy. Don't rush it I am sure you keep looking you will find what you are looking for.

 

[snapsstorer]

I have a JD L116. it may not be like the 180 but you are right about the blades hitting each other if you do not have them placed right(timed). every so often i checked mine to ensure that the outer blades were 90 degrrees off from the center. it ccan be due to a weak tension spring or the belt scretching. I also lubed the spindles just about every 2 months. to keep them from jamming. Not saying that you did not take care of it, but i found out on mine that if i cleaned out the deck after each use my blades stayed timed(or on a 90 degree offset) a lot longer. As for the vibirations, that could be due to the blades needing to be balanced or the spindles(or 1 spindle) being worn.

 

[mac]

Another thing to realize, even if the blades aren't in sync with each each other, they shouldn NEVER touch. It sounds like you may have had the wrong blades on it, or the spindles on the deck were so badly worn as to allow the blades to move sideways. This definately sounds like a mechanical deck issue.

 

[ILENGINE]

On that mower the blades will hit each other is the timing belt slips or not timed correctly. the biggiest reason that I have hear for the problem on that deck is the belt may not be tight enough.