I bought a Raptor SD 54 about four months ago. Have used it very little as we are in long term drought. It is a great machine that starts great, runs great, and cuts a beautiful lawn. No negatives at all for what I need.
Do have one issue though. Can someone tell me why, at full speed, it trails to the left a little? Is there an adjustment I need to do to even it up?
Thanks in advance for your input.
Skip
If your dealer is close by ask him to stop sometime when he's in the area and give it a check. But before you do that make sure you have a good Tire gauge and all your tires are exactly the same pressure.... it makes a big difference on these machines.
#3
BlazNT
Read your manual it will explain how to adjust your bars.
Thanks guys. I checked both those things. The drift is fairly slight, and my yard is small, so not a huge deal. I'll do as suggested and have dealer do a casual check when convenient.
Thanks again.
Skip
check tires like mentioned.
there is an adjustment for each drive. you can see the little lever with threaded rod by looking under the rear of mower. inside of each rear tire.
The tracking usually has to be adjusted when they are sold. Your dealer should take care of that. It will probably never be perfect, but should be close. I believe the manual has instructions on adjusting the tracking. If your dealer is close, I would have them do it. Good Luck...
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.
