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I own right at 1 & 1/4 acres that I have to mow. I used to have an MTD Gold that started having mechanical issues and I had been wanting a zero turn mower so I got a Hustler Raptor 42" mower last week. My problem is that while mowing the front wheels like to come off the ground ALLOT. Not just on the small grade on one side of the house or the ditch, but even in the back yard if I hit any kind of uneven spot. I called the dealer I bought it from and the guy who answered the phone suggested less throttle. Now I can see going slower on the hills that makes sense but there is no reason I believe I should have to in the flat open back yard. Granted I live in a more rural area even though I am in the "city" and my yard never had turf laid.

My question is, Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me.

First thing go punch the guy in the mouth. That told you less throttle. Always and I mean always run at full throttle. The engine and hydros need to run at full throttle.
You can slow down with just the lap bars.
Check tire pressure should be around 10psi.
Dealers like to put over 30psi

And remember that is a rigid frame. It is not made to flex. So you will have one front wheel come up if you are on uneven ground.

Carscw said:

First thing go punch the guy in the mouth. That told you less throttle.

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That was my first thought also. The guy who told me that would get into my conversation every time I went into the dealer.

I was going to get a Scag Liberty when I went in and for some reason talked myself into the Hustler (Probably the $2,000 difference). I'm trying to see if they'll just take this one back and put the money towards the Liberty.

Nick_USMC said:

That was my first thought also. The guy who told me that would get into my conversation every time I went into the dealer. I was going to get a Scag Liberty when I went in and for some reason talked myself into the Hustler (Probably the $2,000 difference). I'm trying to see if they'll just take this one back and put the money towards the Liberty.

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Hustler makes some very good mowers. But I am not a fan of the rapter.
The scag is well worth the extra $2000.

Keep us posted on what they say.

Buy something nice....you'll soon forget the price....always held true for me...lol!

If your Raptor is popping wheelies. Be tickled to death. That means your engine is getting the majority of its torque thru the hydraulics.

Now, when is it popping wheelies? Only on full throttle starts? While moving along and hitting a bump or mound with a short ramp? I'm have a hard time envisioning that rascal doing a wheelie. Not saying it doesn't or won't!

I'd much rather have a mower capable of carrying the front tires than not moving well from it's tracks.

Can you get someone to shoot a short video of it, along with sound, off the mark?

All ZTR's are designed to be very light on the front , otherwise the narrow casters could not do their job and would leave furrows in the grass.
Cheap & easy trick is a bag of cement sitting on the foot plate or some other weights over the front.
A couple of lengths of 6" plastic pipe filled with gravel hanging off the front would look nicer .
They do make castiron weights that clip onto the front of a lot of ZTR's if you want to spend money.
Adjusting the lap bars so they will sit highrt will reduce the leverage as you move them, More bar for less valve opening.
You can also fit some heavier dampers to the lap bars to make you moove them slower.
Last solution is lighter base oil in the hydros ie go to 5w 50 in place of a 10 w 50

mhavanti said:

If your Raptor is popping wheelies. Be tickled to death. That means your engine is getting the majority of its torque thru the hydraulics.

Now, when is it popping wheelies? Only on full throttle starts? While moving along and hitting a bump or mound with a short ramp? I'm have a hard time envisioning that rascal doing a wheelie. Not saying it doesn't or won't!

I'd much rather have a mower capable of carrying the front tires than not moving well from it's tracks.

Can you get someone to shoot a short video of it, along with sound, off the mark?

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I exaggerated slightly when I said popping wheelies. But the front wheels come off the ground allot. I don't have allot of experience with ZTR mowers aside from the Troy Mustang my wife's uncle loaned us while I got a replacement. The front wheels never came off the ground no matter what I was mowing. the only place one or both wheels don't come off the ground is in the drive way. I feel very uncomfortable driving it and my wife won't get on it again (she likes to help with the yard occasionally).

Nick,

First, let me apologize for not thanking you, Marine, for your service and to your wife for helping with the yard. I really wasn't making light of your situation and bert gave some excellent advice that you may want to give a shot.

Adding length to the sticks can really make it harder to pop a wheelie. This is done in many venues and especially in remote control to slow the movements of an airplane, car, boat or motorcycle. Keeps the newbies from crashing their new toys. It can be very helpful.

I would also suggest you take the mower out into the most open spot of the yard, just mess around, full throttle starts, stops, restarts, turns, forward and back until you become comfortable. Paying close attention to what you learn about your operations, then you can teach your bride what you observed and learned so that you both can operate comfortably.

Add the length to the sticks, if that doesn't make you more comfortable, add the front weight.

Always listen to bert's comments as he is always on target. He knows his stuff.

Good luck and once again, thank you for your service,

Hooah

Semper Fi

mhavanti said:

Nick,

First, let me apologize for not thanking you, Marine, for your service and to your wife for helping with the yard.
Good luck and once again, thank you for your service,

Hooah

Semper Fi

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Thank you,

And thank you all for the replies. I think I really wanted the Scag and I talked myself out of it (the money thing I think). But for $3000 I don't think this thing should ride this bad.
It's not even just the starting or stopping but while I'm traveling 1 or both wheels will come up.
I didn't even mention it pulling to the left and 1 lap bar being stiffer than the other. There's allot that upsets me about the mower and allot I like about it. But for $3000 the dislikes outweigh the likes.

Fwiw... I sold my raptor SD this spring and bought a new Hustler FasTrak... the front wheels on The Fast Track actually come off the ground easier than the sd did. And The Fast Track weighs 200 plus pounds more. Both machines did a really clean job of cutting.... picking up what the front wheels lay down. I don't feel unsafe on either machine at all. This year has been extremely rainy and I have a pocket on my lawn that has standing water frequently. I actually get a nice job of mowing by driving forward into the standing water slightly and then backing away and I barely leave a tire track with those front tires.... I'm sure the ground pressure of those front tires is way less than my old 450 pound John Deere lawn tractor. And the raptor SD weighs around 630 pounds and the fast track around 850#. I've seen tons of reviews and videos with the regular Raptor and wheels lifting off the ground so easily doesn't seem to be a normal problem.......wierd.

Last minute thought..... one of the guys in the golf league I play with has a John Deere zero turn.... he said his front wheels chattered and danced a quite a bit.... he found his tire pressures were way over inflated.... once he dropped them all down and got just a little bit of squat to the tires it all went away...just what work for him!

kraky said:

Last minute thought..... one of the guys in the golf league I play with has a John Deere zero turn.... he said his front wheels chattered and danced a quite a bit.... he found his tire pressures were way over inflated.... once he dropped them all down and got just a little bit of squat to the tires it all went away...just what work for him!

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That's the second suggestion I had for lowering the tire pressure so I'll have to see what hustler recommends and adjust them accordingly.

Also I finally got in touch with the Owner/Manager of the place I bought the mower from and they don't take returns. So basically you buy it and you're stuck with it, contrary to what is on their receipts.
I decided that with their smart *** employees and this not being able to return something I'm not happy with, that they pretty much lost my business.
I feel like it's a legitimate complaint and they should have told me there were no returns before I bought it. It's not like I put a ton of hours on it either, I used it 1 time and don't think I put an hour on it (I'm estimating since it doesn't even come with an hour meter).

Wow.... sometimes it's nice living in a boring little town of 4000! They won't even take it back and trade on a different machine? A business like that wouldn't last more than a year around here....geeez.

Nick_USMC said:

That's the second suggestion I had for lowering the tire pressure so I'll have to see what hustler recommends and adjust them accordingly. Also I finally got in touch with the Owner/Manager of the place I bought the mower from and they don't take returns. So basically you buy it and you're stuck with it, contrary to what is on their receipts. I decided that with their smart *** employees and this not being able to return something I'm not happy with, that they pretty much lost my business. I feel like it's a legitimate complaint and they should have told me there were no returns before I bought it. It's not like I put a ton of hours on it either, I used it 1 time and don't think I put an hour on it (I'm estimating since it doesn't even come with an hour meter).

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I guess we back to punching him in the mouth. LOL

Same for my little town. You buy it from the dealer here, you own it. Talks good service, but, when you call or go by, its like he has had a really bad day. While you're there, if a new customer comes in talking purchasing a new mower, his bad day sure seems to change exponentially. I must say, he does have a ton of service from his commercials and does treat them well. Residential owners don't need to call him.

He only services what he sells. Box store sells, he won't touch them at any price.

I left two for three months to serve my country. Talked him into changing the oil, clean the carburetor, lubricate the pull rope spring return, and change the air filter on a Honda Self Propelled walk behind.

Got back to town, went to pick it up, he claimed he didn't have it. I argued with him for a while, then a light bulb clicked and he said, oh yeah. I remember. He walked out to a lean to canopy structure, brought the little Honda out, filthy, covered with sand, leaves, cut grass, etc and black from mildew looking crap. Didn't hardly recognize the unit. He said it was 85 bucks for everything and it is ready to go and had to replace the carburetor because he couldn't get a rebuild kit for it. I have taken the carb apart three times, cleaned it and reused the gaskets each time with no problems.

I paid him, loaded it up, took it home and pulled the dip stick. Black as tar, original oil and it turns out the oil hadn't been changed. Checked the carburetor where I'd used an engraver to put my initials. Yep, you guessed it, initials still there. It wouldn't start, gasoline smelled years old. I couldn't hardly pull the rope. Original air filter still in place with my name written inside between two pleats.

I called him and he said I was wrong and not to bring him any more off brand mowers if I'm going to accuse him of .................. Since I was home for a few days, I took care of it in a few hours (soaking the carb took the longest time) and it runs perfectly. Removed the recoil / fan housing, cleaned the recoil, lubed it and now it is easy to pull the rope and it recoils correctly. I lubricated the cables inside their housings and they both operate smoothly once again. As you can tell, the little Honda is hardly ever used and sits inside a garage taking up space. Just like it to run when I'm ready to loan it out.

I purchased my RSD60 from this dealer earlier by a couple of months and he agreed to service anything I brought him before I purchased the RSD. Well, I learned a lot with this dealer. Lowes now handles the mowers and will actually have mine serviced if I were to need warranty work on the dealer sold product. How's that for customer service?

Now, as far as ride, Tom removed the middle spring from under his chair to smooth out his ride. Runs his tires at 8 pounds and I know that will smooth it out tremendously. Good luck on improving your ride.

If you have a cool enough head and can afford the time there is a dead easy way to resolve this.
Get a sign made clearly stating the FACTS include a copy of the receipt blown up so the refunds policy can be easily seen.
Put the sign on the mower and park it across his driveway or directly in front of his showrooms if driveway blocking is illegal in your area.
Ring the local TV news room and advise them of what you intend to do.
Saturday morning early take your position.
Do the same Sunday
Tell them you are going to do this every day till you get a refund.

This always works , I have done this dozens of times for myself and for others.
The really hard bit is not to get provoked into a heated arguement and definately no fighting.
A friend who I was helping to do this ended up being punched which in a way worked out well.
The franchisors pulled the dealers contract and took back all their unpaid stock.
The dealer was charged with assult found guilty and finned around $ 10,000. My friend got his refund + $ 3,000 in civil compensation.
The dealer appealed and got it bumped up to a higher court, lost that case had to fork out a few thousand more in costs.
By this time Fair Trading ( our government regulator ) was forced to do something so they deregistered his business.
So he then had to continue as an unregistered sole trader which costs a small fortune in excessivly high insurance costs .
The shop is now a block of home units .

OTOH another one went horribly wrong as the protester lost his cool got into a heated arguement and was carted off by the local plod charged with causing afront & afray, refuseing the directions of a police officer and swearing in public.

bert,

You're in business and I was for over 40 years. I retired for fifteen minutes and couldn't handle the pressure, so, I went to work for our Homeland Security agency. In all those 40 years, I always knew my customers didn't have to spend their dime with any of my businesses and therefore, I made sure my employees weren't rude to folks, went above and beyond to supply not only the best of parts available, also the best customer service.

If something had a warranty or not, such as electrical parts, I replaced with a smile although it was coming out of my pocket. How did this work out? Considering a huge parts company came into town, took almost all of the local part store's business for about a year and a half. It finally got around that my store solely replaced regulators and other electrical parts that the huge stores would not. Ended up with more business than before the big company came to town. I picked up almost all of the other local parts store owner's electrical business.

My engine company placed four overheat tabs on each engine or two tabs on each head out the door. I personally stamped my triple initials into each head, block, crank that left that shop. If a person would install their engines, heads, etc. and bring the vehicle to our shop, we would, at no cost to the consumer, check the heads for torque specs, make sure their engines were in time, the distributors were doing the right thing, carbs were doing the right thing such as not running lean and checked their exhaust temps to make sure the engines were ready to run the H out of them. This made my machine shop one of the very largest in several states. It cost me big time early on, however, made me long term. You have to spend money to make money.

Bad dealers hurt themselves much more than the customers they disrespect.

Thanks, Bert, for helping all the folks that ask for help in the forum. You're a good man. All of you ladies and gents that earnestly put good information and advice in the forum are good folks. Keep it up.

Max

Aww Gees I am going to get all mushy if you keep that up.
I am here to learn, like most every one else.
However good customer service is parramount.
Don't complain or fob off, just fix it.
Works well.
It is the off season here & I have 2 weeks work sitting in the shop and 2 weeks waiting to be collected.
A happy customer is the best advertisement you can get .
In the very crowded Sydney transport market we went from nothing to a $ 3,000,000 / pa company in 5 years.
This was despite the big players offering our customers rates as low as 1/3 of what we charged.
Some did leave, but most came back when they realised that the price was not as important as the service.

If I have too much stock of used mowers they go off to auction where the buyers know they could be lemons and carry no warranty
If I sell a mower it comes with a new mower equivalent warranty which I stand by.
This gets some customers undies in a knot when they ask for a $ 10 trade in mower & I tell them I don't sell $ 10 as traded only $ 100 fully serviced & guaranteed mowers.

My front wheels come off the ground a lot, especially on steep hills and uneven ground. It's better to have a stiff frame than one that flexes and eventually cracks and breaks.

Well I had to use it to cut the grass again since I'm going to spend more money with them getting another mower and I'm starting to get used to it but it still feels sketchy driving it. The tire pressure recommendations from Hustler are 8 - 12 psi and the pressure was around 11 psi in all 4 tires so that's good.

I guess my whole deal is I'm not happy with the mower. If you bought a car and drove it once and weren't happy with it you could take it back, but at least you can test drive cars before hand.

I have the time to do that all day, every day bertsmobile1 since I'm retired. I'm not that type of person. I just won't do business with them again and I I'll let everyone me and my wife know about our experience and my wife seems to know everybody around here. He still has a family to feed so I don't want to run his business into the ground over something like this but I'm certainly not going to help him get any business.

No it is not about revenge or sending some one broke.
It is all about ascerting your rights as a consummer and demonstrating that dealing in an unethical manner can have consequences.
I try very hard never to bad mouth any one as that ends up doing me more harm than good.
However informing the general public becomes a case of public good and not some cranky old bugger venting their spleen.
People can see what is being complained about and make up their own minds and you do not end up being accused of slander.
This method is very effective and has worked every time I have been involved although as stated it requires a very cool temprement.
Even the bloke who got charged, ended up with a replacement car.
Usually it only takes an hour or two although some new car dealers took 2 weekends before they came to understand we were serious.
I once chained myself to the front doors of an insurance company over a workers compensation claim for 20 weeks wages.
They paid the doctor, they paid the hospital , they paid the physio, they paid 14 weeks of crutch hire but just would not pay me.
The owner pulled out his cheque book asked me how much I was owed, wrote a cheque for twice that amount then promptly sacked a large proportion of his workers compensation staff.
This was too late as apparently No 1 son had been doing some very shady deals daddy did not know about and they were short changing all the compo claims to hide the cash shortfall.
I became reasonable friends with the owner, who employed my company for his transport and his only comment was it was a shame some one like me had not come onto the scene earlier and he would have been in a position to salvage the business.
No 1 son went to prison for quite a long time for a white collar crime.