Export thread

I have been looking for a while at the Worldlawn cobra zero turn mowers and I am leaning towards getting a 60" deck. They have great specs as far as the equipment goes, kawasaki fx motors, separate pumps and wheel motors, 7 guage deck, rops, etc, and even though they are partly made in china and assembled there they seem to be a very solid built machine. Does anyone have any experience with this brand and any opinions they would like to share. Thanks.

Dealer here near me. He gets in about a truckload a year and sells them all by about May ist. Fellow here in town has one and uses it to mow some fairly large properties, about a half block to a block sized. Several farmers own one as well as my doctor who lives on a farm. Several acres is the size of most of those mows. They do a nice job, are built heavy, have good equipment on them. I see them at the dealers place for service in the spring , but he claims none yet brought back for repairs. To be honest I have never seen him working on one other than general service. The owners seem to like them. They seem to be the old Encore units and those seemed to be old Exmark units. I had the catalog this spring, the whole unit seems to be made in Nebraska, and all the equipment on them was listed as made in America. There is a fair amount of machinery at the old plant to make the units from what I have heard. They are owned by Chinese investors importers.

possum said:

Dealer here near me. He gets in about a truckload a year and sells them all by about May ist. Fellow here in town has one and uses it to mow some fairly large properties, about a half block to a block sized. Several farmers own one as well as my doctor who lives on a farm. Several acres is the size of most of those mows. They do a nice job, are built heavy, have good equipment on them. I see them at the dealers place for service in the spring , but he claims none yet brought back for repairs. To be honest I have never seen him working on one other than general service. The owners seem to like them. They seem to be the old Encore units and those seemed to be old Exmark units. I had the catalog this spring, the whole unit seems to be made in Nebraska, and all the equipment on them was listed as made in America. There is a fair amount of machinery at the old plant to make the units from what I have heard. They are owned by Chinese investors importers.

Click to expand...

Yes, from what I understand they are chinese owned and recently aquired encore. The mowers are still assembled and partly manufactured in china and then shipped here. Most of the major components are made in the usa such as the engines, pumps, motors, wheels, etc and then shipped overseas. Eventually I think they would like to do all the assembling here in the states and maybe the manufacturing also, but not sure. Encore is still made here in the plant. I am glad to hear that your delaer has not had any problems with the untis other than the yearly maintenance. Thanks for the reply.

skkipp said:

I have been looking for a while at the Worldlawn cobra zero turn mowers and I am leaning towards getting a 60" deck. They have great specs as far as the equipment goes, kawasaki fx motors, separate pumps and wheel motors, 7 guage deck, rops, etc, and even though they are partly made in china and assembled there they seem to be a very solid built machine. Does anyone have any experience with this brand and any opinions they would like to share. Thanks.

Click to expand...

I purchased a World Lawn Cobra 60" (wyz6027kw) four years ago for $7,000.00. WORST PUCHASE EVER! The dealer stopped selling them the next year. EVERY year I spend $400.00 to $500.00 in parts on this mower- both spindles, both belts, drive clutch, choke knob assy, throttle knob assy, gas gauge, hour meter, one hydraulic motor. Impossible to get parts for. Manufacturer will not return any calls, when they finally did, they would NOT sell me parts. Please , buy anything but this mower.

Down here World Lawn was brouht in by the Stihl franchiseor
It looks like it was a blackmail deal to gain access to Honda Power products as they principally sold the Honda self propelled knock offs.
They stopped imporing them when they got a Honda distribution agreement.
A couple of the Stihl dealers took over the distribution so there must be some money in the deal.
I have 6 of these in my repair run and they are what we call mudguards "shinny on the top sh*t underneath" absolute garbage but the owners who think they got a $ 2000 mower for $ 600 naturally love them and don't seem to notice they are always replacing chassis parts.
Don't know if the B &S dollied up to look like a Honda from 20' away are real or Chineese coppies but they seem to be OK.
Drive cables have no adjustments , gearboxes are not secured and break away clutches give up the ghost and can not be serviced.

I had 2 Cobras in my service run, I have dropped one customer and am about to drop the other.
The mowers LOOK good buy are very badly made, All external welds were beautiful, all internal welds were garbage.
The spindles run on 6200 series bearings that are not up to the task and collapse followed by tearing up the spindle pulleys.
Blades are badly made and seem to either brittle fracture or bend and in one case flattened out in use so much they started to strike each other.
In 320 hours over 2 years one customer has replaced the following
7 blades
3 spindle pulleys
6 spindle bearings
And this is in addition to regular service replacement parts.
He loves his Cobra and keeps telling me how he got an $18,000 equivalent mower for $ 8,000 so is happy as a pig in mud.
I can not find a serial number on the Kawakasi engine which was fitted with Stens filters when he got it from the dealer so I have doubts that it is genuine as I pay $ 3345 for genuine FX's wholesale.

The customer I dropped simply would not pay for his services ans seemed to think because he paid $ 8000 for the mower he should only pay $ 200 for a full service including parts.
His Cobra seems to be much better made that the other but then again he is only mowing 2 cleared acres of well manicured lawns.

So like a lot of junk that comes out of China there appears to be no quality control.
Some seem to be good while othere are rolling piles of scrap metal.
No parts back up and the distributor actually claimed the spindle problem was beause of insufficiant low grade grease in the sealed bearings & I should pop the seals and put more better grease in there.
And these are the bearings he supplies to customers.

So if you are a gambleing type of a person and have a lazy $ 10,000 you are willing to part with go ahead and try your luck.

From the pictures on their web site it looks like a very cheep mower. Frame is too small and front forks look like they would break first gopher whole you find. And $12000 for that when you can get so much better for that price.

I don't know that world lawn has enough dealer support in the U.S. For me to purchase one. Having a local dealer is great, but how long does it take them to get parts? One of the reasons encore went out of business was lack of quality dealer support.

AFAIK and I could be totally wrong the USA models are prefabbed in China then assembled in the USA at the old Exmark factory
The ones we get here are fully made in the PRC.
World Lawn is a subsiduary of World Products Engineering in the PCR and Worldlawn Power Equipment in the USA is another totally seperate entity ( some sort of tax or import duty lurk no doubt )
WorldLawn USA is basically a stack of the old Exmark executives and the Cobra & Raptor & Viper are made to their designs by World in PRC.
It looks like the executives were all from the marketing & accounting divisions and those who know more that I tell me the main difference between the Exmark range and the World lawn range are metric fasteners & bearings.
If they were made from good quality steel, properly welded together then they would probably be a reasonably good domestic level mower, thsy certainly have put all the good gear in them, they just cant seem to put them together right.
The spindle housings I have replaced were not machined concentrically so I had to index them around 1 hole at a time so that the blades missed the deck baffels and the other blades.
The caster pivots & axels are thick enough, but again fitted with flimsey bearings and the whole frame is very thick plasticine umm sorry Chineese steel,it is probably only just below the bottom of the specs.
The USA catalogue does not list the Honda knock offs we get down here and the Worldlawn ride ons seem to have a different company listed on every compliance plate I have seen to date.

Several other companies bring them in down here as well.
Rover ( an MTD subsiduary ) sells them paited a different colour and we get them badged as Parklanders a well.

If I am wrong, then I would appreciate being corrected, but that is what it I have dug up when trying to find service details and parts suppliers.
Being told to "bring in the old cable & I will see if we can match it up with something" does not wash well .

You I'm

bertsmobile1 said:

AFAIK and I could be totally wrong the USA models are prefabbed in China then assembled in the USA at the old Exmark factory
The ones we get here are fully made in the PRC.
World Lawn is a subsiduary of World Products Engineering in the PCR and Worldlawn Power Equipment in the USA is another totally seperate entity ( some sort of tax or import duty lurk no doubt )
WorldLawn USA is basically a stack of the old Exmark executives and the Cobra & Raptor & Viper are made to their designs by World in PRC.
It looks like the executives were all from the marketing & accounting divisions and those who know more that I tell me the main difference between the Exmark range and the World lawn range are metric fasteners & bearings.
If they were made from good quality steel, properly welded together then they would probably be a reasonably good domestic level mower, thsy certainly have put all the good gear in them, they just cant seem to put them together right.
The spindle housings I have replaced were not machined concentrically so I had to index them around 1 hole at a time so that the blades missed the deck baffels and the other blades.
The caster pivots & axels are thick enough, but again fitted with flimsey bearings and the whole frame is very thick plasticine umm sorry Chineese steel,it is probably only just below the bottom of the specs.
The USA catalogue does not list the Honda knock offs we get down here and the Worldlawn ride ons seem to have a different company listed on every compliance plate I have seen to date.

Several other companies bring them in down here as well.
Rover ( an MTD subsiduary ) sells them paited a different colour and we get them badged as Parklanders a well.

If I am wrong, then I would appreciate being corrected, but that is what it I have dug up when trying to find service details and parts suppliers.
Being told to "bring in the old cable & I will see if we can match it up with something" does not wash well .

Click to expand...

Your post isn't entirely correct concerning World lawn being the same design as Exmark and manufactured in the old Exmark plant. Toro purchased Exmark in 1997. The original owner of Exmark started another company called Encore and opened another factory in Beatrice Nebraska (same town Exmark was being manufactured in). Encore mowers never caught on like Exmark did, and lacked dealer support. World Lawn purchased Encore in 2011 and uses the Encore factory located in Nebraska, not the Exmark factory.

Shughes717 said:

You I'm

Your post isn't entirely correct concerning World lawn being the same design as Exmark and manufactured in the old Exmark plant. Toro purchased Exmark in 1997. The original owner of Exmark started another company called Encore and opened another factory in Beatrice Nebraska (same town Exmark was being manufactured in). Encore mowers never caught on like Exmark did, and lacked dealer support. World Lawn purchased Encore in 2011 and uses the Encore factory located in Nebraska, not the Exmark factory.

Click to expand...

Thank you.

I like to get things right where ever possible

bertsmobile1 said:

Thank you.

I like to get things right where ever possible

Click to expand...

Lol, no problem. Encore mowers and Exmark did have some similarities.