Lets see. An 08 bronco and a Kohler Courage single cylinder mowing two acres with no oil changes and its locked up from low oil. Yes. Please, Please Pretty Please tear it down, look it over, see what has gone wrong, price the parts, and take lots of notes and pictures. Then change your log in name to Kohler Courage single cylinder and you will be very busy on here trying to explain why your Courage lasted through helfire and dangnation and everyone else who said they took care of theirs and they shelled out with less than 80 hours on them. After that you can tell everyone who has a Bronco that claims it falls apart just getting it from Lowes to the trailer how you managed to mow 2 acres for some lengh of time and it is still in pretty much one piece. You seem to know something that a good many do not about taking care of your lawntractor. Brush up on checking the oil and buy a filter wrench and I think you are on your way. I would not be bashful about the incident after all its in the past and I doubt the old Troybilt owned ya much. Please do become a regular on here with what you find on that Courage when you tear it down. Im going to be waiting on pins and needles. One more thing if you would allow me. Please do think it over and tell us how many hours this engine had on it and just how hard you ran it as well. Thank You.
I have put this thing through hell for what it is. Like I said, 2 acres (2.2 actually). About 1.25 acres were corn fields until a year or two before bought the house. Hard ground when dry, muddy as heck when wet. So needless to say, the suspension has been through a lot. Didn't cut when it was soaking wet, but our grass gets so thick in some places. This house used to have an outhouse on the property - that area gets thick fast. A nice chunk gets a good deal of shade, so it stays wet when it gets tall. The first time we cut with it it was cutting down 5'+ tall grass shoots. It didn't cut well, but it cut. Wife wrecked a blade earlier this year, straight down into the dirt.
I always had an issue with how it cut, it always, without fail no matter how I tried to level and clean the deck, leave a strip near the middle uncut or barely cut. I suppose you are supposed to sharpen blades after you buy them and before installing for the first time? If so, oops. Anyhow, I have a short temper and it would tick me off how bad it was cutting at times that I would just floor it. Bumps and ruts in the ground and all. Thick grass and all. I dogged her. Now that I look back, it's probably a little surprising the thing has held up for being the bottom rung, basically. She wasn't driven this hard most of the time, just sometimes. Most times I would slow to a crawl through the thick stuff, etc.
Think I replaced the deck belt twice and the drive belt once and only because it was split so bad - it was still working though.
After cutting with the Bad Boy, I see how little mower I really had. We just couldn't afford anything bigger.
That said, had I maintained it better, and not dogged her so much, she would probably still be plugging along just fine.
As for hours, well you figure it takes ~5 hours or so to cut the yard with it, more when it's thick and overgrown, and we bought it in August of '08 - and we cut usually once every week, but we did skip weeks at times. Just average every other week from May-Sept so what around 12 weeks? 60 hours a year for 4ish years - so 240 hours? Give or take.
