Toro 2023 Timecutter 75747 Hydrostatic Transmission maintenance necessary?

[ILENGINE]

Who are these people that asked for mowers that crap out after a few years???

Nobody in their right mind wants something designed to not last a long time.

What's obvio9usly going on here in all industries is all the big companies get together and have decided to design stuff to not last long on purpose so people will have to buy new ones sooner than they should have to.

There are words for this - greed and control

In the 70's you could purchase a push mower for $79 and it would last 20+ years. In early 2000's you could still purchase a push mower for $79. In 70's a riding mower with a 10 hp engine and 42 inch deck was $1,000 that would last 20+ years. Up until around 2020 you could still purchase a riding mower for $1,000. So is this a situation of the manufacturers refusing to mark up their prices or the consumers refusing to pay for 1970's quality in 2000. People say they want quality but then refuse to pay for quality.

So to maintain that quality that $79 push mower would be $350-500. That once $1,000 rider would now be $4,000-5,000. That is were the quality went. There are a lot of cases where people would push their mower to the curb and go purchase a new mower instead of repairing, which is the reason that the average push mower is replaced every 3.5 years and gets 12 hours of use/year. Same as the average riding mower gets 38 hours/year and is replaced every 4.5 years. So part of the issue is people just don't get stuff fixed and part of the issue is trying to keep up with the Jones's since my neighbor got a new riding mower now I need a new mower.

 

[Jimmy the Lock]

my neighbor got a new riding mower now I need a new mower.

My neighbor not only got a new riding mower... he put mag wheels on it, dual exhaust with headers, a blower, and he lowered it.

Now he's entering lawn mower racing contests!
And when he mows his grass, it's really fast!

 

[bertsmobile1]

People think it is a conspiracy but in reality it is the consumers fault 100%
If no one bought the $ 1000 ride ons then no one will make them
If everyone bought the $ 10,000 ride ons then that is what the factories will make
The problem is the buying public are too cheap for their own good.
People always ask me what I recommend and the answer is always the same a Greenfields with a single cylinder engine or a Cox with the cone drive .
Then next week they ask do I have any good cheap second hand ones as second hand they are more expensive than the top line of Husqvarna's brand new .
And the reply is always the same, no cheap used ones because the mowers are so good they retain their price almost forever
Then in 12 months time they ring me to come fix their Cub / Husky and ask me why it broke down in just 1 year .
I just did a new belt on a commercial customers 2004 Evolution 2000 MkIIa 17/34 .
He mows around 20 acres with it every week.
Last year I replaced the clutch corks , a $ 350 ( Aus ) job on a mower with 6,000 hours on it
Find a Hydro that runs for 6,000 hours , it needed two $ 7 springs and a $ 2 disc brake pad
The year before that it got a full service with new chains & sprockets , spindle bearings & some pulleys $ 675
He makes around $ 150,000 / year with it .

 

[Jimmy the Lock]

People think it is a conspiracy but in reality it is the consumers fault 100%

C'mon man, that's a fresh steaming hot load of horse hockey!

I know it is because the big companies used to make things that lasted a long time and then the pointy headed college guys decided if we make things to not last so long we'll get to sell more stuff!

And, they learned they could cut costs by having things made in southern chine by them snuff dippin Chinese rednecks and increase their profit margins too!

 

[bertsmobile1]

You are way over your head
You can buy quality mowers that will run forever with just regular servicing and the companies stock parts for 40 year old mowers.
They are called Walkers, Grasshoppers & John Deers ( excluding the 100 series )
But people just will not pay a fair price for a quality machine it is just that simple
Every one wants it all, they want it now & want it or free

Example the 100 series JD's are just about identical to the AYP machines ( McCulloch - Poulan - Yard Pro - Roper - Husqvarna ) to the point that a lot of the parts will interchange
But the AYP junk outsells the JD which is substantially better by around 20:1
Why, because the AYP stuff is very poor quality so is a couple of hundred cheaper
Pig ignorant people who have never worked in a factory seem to think ride ons are made in the south pole by Santa's elves from fairy dust
And this is before you consider freight

 

[StarTech]

Right now the ride-ons are running $2K for cheapest and around $3.5K for low end versions in my area. I just repaired a JD L120 for $850 that twice the mower than $3.5K one. Yet the customer think was better to purchase the new mower than repair a good mower that they were just been abusing. No way that $3500 mower would take the same abuse.

But they do expect the cheap stuff to last just as long as the better equipment. Gripe about paying a couple hundred to repair it yet go out and drop a small fortune of illegal drugs.

What those complaining about prices should do for once is to take the IPL and price out every single parts then add about 16 hours labor to it. The only OEM are to sale as cheap as they do is because bulk purchases of parts and assembly line labor.

 

[Jimmy the Lock]

You are way over your head

No, I actually understand the greed that mankind has.

We have the technology to build all kinds of eq2uipment to last a really long time at a reasonable cost... but, they simply won't do that because it's to their advantage to make things designed to breakdown so they can sell more stuff.

 

[Jimmy the Lock]

Right now the ride-ons are running $2K for cheapest and around $3.5K for low end versions in my area. I just repaired a JD L120 for $850 that twice the mower than $3.5K one. Yet the customer think was better to purchase the new mower than repair a good mower that they were just been abusing. No way that $3500 mower would take the same abuse.

But they do expect the cheap stuff to last just as long as the better equipment. Gripe about paying a couple hundred to repair it yet go out and drop a small fortune of illegal drugs.

What those complaining about prices should do for once is to take the IPL and price out every single parts then add about 16 hours labor to it. The only OEM are to sale as cheap as they do is because bulk purchases of parts and assembly line labor.

No need to worry about any of this... it's a free country and people have the right to buy whatever they want and throw it away when it breaks down and buy another one.

We all have out opinions and we should allow others to have their as well without worrying about what they do or don't do.

That is until the US becomes a communist nation and the gubment tells us which mower we can have which shouldn't be too far off now.

 

[bertsmobile1]

There is one little catch to that Jimmy
The planet has finite amounts of every mineral
So with every "throw away" anything there should be an environmental tax to cover the cost of recovery of the non renewable resources and the disposal costs .
I generate 1 cubic meter of landfill / year and that is the combined waste from both the business & the house
The local council levy $ 1,200 / year for garbage collection and next year it is going up to $ 1500 .
People who buy throw away junk are subsidised by people who are responsible consumers .
Capitalist economies waste whatever resource is plentiful in their area and steal what is not .
You life style is subsidised by child slave labour all around the world and people live in abject poverty just so you can get stuff a couple of bucks cheaper .

But it really does not matter because humanity will not make it past the year 3000 by which time we will have polluted ourselves & consumed ourselves into oblivion .
The oxygen content of the air we breathe is dropping while the other gasses are increasing.
This alone is killing off trillions of insects who play a vital part in the ecology and indirectly in the food supply .
One would have thought that the massive bee deaths last decade would have been a big wake up call but no Australia & New Zealand saved the worlds food supply by exporting hundreds of millions of queen bees all around the world to reestablish bee populations world wide to the point that local honey prices increased in price 500 % Noticed the decline in the number of small birds around your neighbourhood in the past decade or two ?
It is not all because of land clearing and domestic cats, insect numbers are down and on top of that they suffer from the lower oxygen content of the air .
All of the governments know this but they all hide it by quoting numbers from small islands in the middle of the oceans.
Back in 1968 the oxygen content in Sydney air was 22.5% by the time I left the industry in 1976 it was down to 22.1% ( we needed these numbers to profile the burners in the furnaces ) in 2020 it was down to 20.1% at 19.5 % humans have trouble breathing at 19% most will get very sick, at 18% we are all dead bar those who have evolved to breathe the thin air at very high altitudes .
The major airlines are all looking at resumption of supersonic flights that travel through and consume the Ozone layer.
This bit of stupidity just so some ones fat arse can get to London or New York a couple of hours faster is also destroying life on the planet as the only thing that protects all life on earth from cosmic radiation, is the Ozone layer so as we gobble it up just so Musk & Bezos can get from the US to London for lunch, back to the USA for afternoon tea and be in Paris in time for supper is firstly going to fry every living thing on the planet , And on top of that a little thing called Partial Pressure Equilibrium will cause even more of the oxygen we breathe to be converted to Ozone which is a poison ( used to kill bacteria in the water that fizzy drinks are made from )

 

[shurguywutt]

This kind of went off on a tangent so I guess I will join you on the edge

Bert, I totally respect you, you are a smart person with a lot of experience in what you do but the things you mention are never going to be fixed... In fact they are going to get exceedingly worse and things will go on for only a short while longer, nowhere even close to the year 3000. The convergence of signs and biblical prophecy makes this unavoidable.

Now don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean we should just throw our hands up in the air and not try to do what is right... We should still strive to help others, protect the environment, obey the laws, live in peace, etc. But ultimately, the world and the human condition, will always be at odds with this.

I know you are an atheist but if you look at many of the things you mention, including weather events, the love of many growing cold, corruption, greed, terrorism, child trafficking, etc., etc., the world's problems are not going to be fixed via human government/taxation/legalism. These things have been tried many times over and they have never worked. God will eventually have to (and He certainly will) fix things Himself.

“All that we call human history–money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery–[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” – C.S. Lewis