I've happily owned and used a 2135 for ten years and have a 2165 for a spare. However, I never knew or saw anything which led me to believe they were built for commercial service. What differentiates the 2000 series from the Cub Cadet homeowner mowers of a similar size and horsepower?
Sure were.
1) fitted with horizontal shaft engine. which cost 2 to 3 times as much as a vertical shaft engine because they are designed to work 50 hours a week not 50 hours a year.
2) shaft drive cost 5 times as much as a belt & a couple of pulleys.
3) very strong decks pressed from steel twice as thick as domestic mower decks.
4) still the thickest longest lasting mower blades
5) tapper roller bearings on spindles that will take the punishment that blades put spindle bearing through
6) big heavy spindles, never bend no matter what you do to them
7) top of the available line of hydrodrives at the time the drive alone cost more than 1/3 of the domestic mowers complete.
8) quick change decks ( now standard on all MTD range )
9) only mower from that time with cruise control.
Yours is 10 years old so I am assuming you got it second hand ?
Still going strong and no major problems.
Down here the only problem they had was overheating due to insufficient cooling caused by running the pto drive off the flywheel.
Fixed by removing the side covers.
A bit further South ( cooler regions ) it was not a problem.
Still one of the best tractors mowers around and makes most modern tractors look like the cheap junk they are.
Cubs were actually designes as a tractor scaled down for small acreage farms by IH who actually did make real tractors, not as a mower.
I bought my 2135 used with low hours ten or so years ago and remember the first time I did the spring tuneup with new blades and filters, the parts counterman told me it was one of the best ever made and I should keep fixing it as long as I could.
When a bare 2165 came up for relatively cheap, I bought it for parts. It had been used as a salt spreader in an apartment complex, so the floorboard sheet metal was rusted away. As far as I can tell, the PTO clutch has never been used. I'm still looking for a mower deck and other implements for it, but the 2000-series seems to be long-lived.
Only two problem so far:
1.The fuel pump is getting weak and vapor locking on hot days.
2. The switches and wiring have all failed. One by one, I've disconnected the seat, reverse and brake safety switches and replaced the start and PTO switches with aftermarket and rewired the entire tractor.
