When I first got into mower repairs, tracking on ZTR's was one of my biggest problems.
You should be able to go 50 yards full forward then the same distance full reverse and end up exactly where you started from on flat level ground.
And the first ZTR I worked on this took a full day & a half where as it is supposed to be done as part of a normal 2 hour service.
Got it to the owners place, where his ground was slopped , proud of my handiwork demonstrated just how good I had adjusted his mower.
Fatal mistake, in the space of his font about 100 foot lawn the mower returned better than 10 foot to the right ( downhill ).
This started a dispute and I ended up well out of pocket but with a very valuable lesson learned.
No one mows dead flat, level concrete with no slip under the wheels.
The next ZTR was a commercially used Grate Dane, a very fast machine with very short lap bars which tossed 360's at the slightest provocation.
Again I attempted to correct the tracking and when returned the driver had problems driving it because he was used to the bad tracking and ended up running over a lot of things for the next few days (so the owner told me ).
Thus from then on tracking only gets adjusted if the mower will not sit still when both bars are in the neutral position and / or it is impossible to drive 300 foot in a strait line.
