OT: Push mowers?

[Casey in Ky]

Just bought a new house away from the farm with a very small yard so I"m going to be needing a small pushmower. Lowes has a couple of Troybilt pushmowers on clearance. One has the Honda engine and is a 3 in 1 mower(side discharge, mulching, and rear bagger), the other has a Briggs and is rear bagger only. Both are front wheel self propelled. Honda is $239 and the Briggs $165. Is the Honda motor really that much better??? The Briggs is a little bigger, 190cc to 160cc if I remember correctly. Thanks for any input. Casey

 

[Anonymous-0]

If it were me, I would buy the cheapest new Briggs/Techums powered non self-propelled mower I could find. I bought a 3.5 hp Briggs, 20" cut, fifteen years ago. It has mowed ACRES of grass. The wheels are flopping on the axels, but it still starts on the first pull.

Glenn F.

 

[super99]

Check out the B/S motor, the cheap ones have a plastic carb, nothing to adjust. Have one on my pressure washer, used ethanol blend gas and the next time I wanted to use it, it wouldn't start. Tried everything I could think of and no go. Finally took it to town, the gasket between carb and gas tank was bad, replaced it and then it ran. Have had replace 3 so far. ONLY use regular gas and run tank dry each time you use it. Make sure you can get parts for self propelled units, I think they are made pretty cheap and push a lot harder when they don't work. Chris

 

[rustyfarmall]

Glenn, I agree. Those cheapies will usually last much longer than a person thinks. We got a good 12 years out of one that didn't cost much more than $100. It finally got to the point that it just wouldn't run good anymore, so I threw it on the iron pile and bought a new one for $170. It will be starting on its third year.

 

[BLinWMI]

Do not buy the Troybuilt, I run a landscape company and have played this game for years. Both engines are fine but the rest of the mower is junk, the decks are soft steel and the wheels will wear out. The tread will actually fall off the tire. The Briggs is probably an OHV and these are good engines, you can tell by the grey bump facing forward on the very front of the mower. The GX 160 Honda engines are also good engines, a 160 should be 5.5 horse. I will tell you the Honda engine parts are alot cheaper then a Briggs if you ever need them. I bought a crank for one of these Honda engines this year, it was 24 dollars where the last Briggs crank I bought was almost 70. I run 5 landscape crews and have tried every mower brand. My advise would be to find a Honda dealer and buy the bare bones true Honda push mower. Second best would be to bare bones John Deere from a Deere dealer. I am not convinced the ones Lowes sells are the same quality as the ones Deere dealers sell. My third choice, and probably the cheapest would be to buy a craftsman mower from Sears. I would stay as far as possible from any Troybuilt/MTD mower/Cub Cadet, just make sure whatever you buy has the 160/190 Honda, the OHV Briggs, or the Tecumseh with the small oval air filter on the left hand side. Also forgot, the Toro mowers are pretty decent too, with Tecumseh engines, I actually am running 4 of these right now.

 

[ericlb]

well i bought a honda hra 214 mower back in 1987, after 1 new engine 5 years ago and some smaller stuff i sold it to a neighbor for 50 bucks, its still going, everything else here that used small engins is briggs powered, but i get about 5 to 7 years out of them and there done, except the welder it has a 16 horse briggs on it and still runs good, [10 years old]

 

[Tradititonal Farmer]

I have a neat little orginal John Deere push mower with a Briggs engine runs good $50

 

[UncleTom]

I get them off the curb and do very little to them and they last for years. All brands too.

 

[glennster]

i agree with ya uncle tom, just take a ride around town on garbage day, grab 3 or 4 push mowers, and make one good one out of em. most often the carbs are plugged up from sitting over the winter. a little cleaning and sharpen the blade and you are good to go!!

 

[jose bagge]

head to the landfill and pick one out of the metal dumpster...or two or three. City folks seem to toss these out as soon as they run out of gas, and with your repair skills you can probably get it going in an hour or less. Free and recycled...

 

[Kirk Grau]

Several really good comments so far, I will add my $0.02:

Depending on your physical capabilities and the size of the yard you might want to consider a very light mower without self propel. If there are a lot of turns for trees/obstructions the extra weight of the propel mechanism can become cumbersome.

I have 2 push mowers. a Lawn-Boy I purchased when we bought our first place in town most of 20 years ago and it is still running fine. The second mower was purchased last year after my wife wanted the areas around our current place that get walked mowed more often than I had time for. Criteria was self start/self propel so she could use it. Like you, I haunted the close-out aisle at Lowes/HD/etc. Bought a pretend John Deere from Lowes, the self propel lasted for about 2 uses and boy was it heavy and hard to turn. My wife hated using it so it was returned without even a consideration of repairing it. After a few weeks and having to mow myself, I was going past the local Toro dealer and decided to stop. Spent quite a bit more than I wanted to, but brought a Toro Personal Pace Self Propel mower home. Wife loves it (so do I), the self propel system is really a fine piece of ergonomic engineering and it probably weighs as much as the JD that I returned, but seems to be distributed differently. It really handles easily.

Don't have a long term experience yet, but it has been great for 1 season.

Kirk

 

[BIG RED 1]

BLinWMI Please get your facts straight. Cub Cadet is not the same as a MTD.
MTD Owns Cub Cadet but the manufacturing practices are quite more stringent then MTD
We have several Commercial customers that swear by Cub Cadet Walk Mowers
Randy in Iowa-You Friendly Cub Cadet Dealer

 

[balatonm]

I have a craftsman 3-1 self-propelled mower and love it. This will be the third season that I've had it and have only had to replace the drive unit last year, but I also mowe a lot of grass, and a lot of steap hills.

 

[Luke S]

Can't advise you, I am allergic to push mowers.

 

[Lee in Iowa]

One guy I know buys a new push mower every fall when they are on clearance. He uses it for a year and then takes it to a consignment auction in the spring and starts using the one he bought the fall before. He never has to change oil sharpen a blade or clean out a deck and sometimes he makes money. Lee

 

[Anonymous-0]

About 10 years ago, I bought a top-of-the-line self-propelled Honda push mower. For the money I spent, I could have bought 4 or 5 "cheap-o's". Within 3 seasons, the Honda was causing trouble. (not the engine, but the rest of the mower) In the following 3 years I spent almost the original purchase price again in parts and repairs. By the 7th season, I gave up on it. I bought the cheapest thing i could find to replace it. A $99 "Yard Machine" w/ 4hp briggs, no frills, cheap lightweight deck, stamped blade. It'll start it's 5th season this year. I think I might have changed the oil 2 years ago, but I don't remember. It's never hesitated to start on the first pull of the rope. And if it explodes when I start it this spring, I'll go find another one just like it.

 

[Alex-41JDb]

If you have the repair skills, you probably do, look for a few of the side of the road. Just make it a project, people usually toss them out once they lose the gas cap or the fuel line cracks. Or if you cant get it going take it to a local small lawn and garden and they can tell you whats the matter with it in about a minute. As for new ones, we run toros on our golf course, toro makes excellent equip.Alex

 

[Nancy Howell]

Best push mower I ever had was a $10 cheapie bought at a garage sale. Don't remember what brand, but it ran for years. We bought a Murray that lasted quite a while before it finally quit. Bought another Murray a couple of years ago, but can tell its not as good as the old one and hard to start. Won't even sputter until you've pushed the primer bulb at least 15 times.

 

[balatonm]

BTW The warintys dont mean any thing, nothing brakes untill the warrenty expiers, nomatter how hard you are on them.

 

[JT]

If what you say is true, then why do a lot of the parts interchange?????
Jim

 

[buickanddeere]

Wear good steel toed boots, ear plugs and safety glasses.
My sister is a RN and Paramedic. Amazing how many people cut grass ( for a while ) wearing just shorts and sandals.

 

[BLinWMI]

That may very well be if you are talking about Cub Cadets commercial line but the residential push mowers and the 4 in 1 blower vacs are identical to Troybuilt units only with Tecumseh engines on them. Anyone can go to TSC and see Cubs low dollar line. I have one of the push 21 inch as well as one of their 4 in 1 vacs. They are identical down to every part other than the engine and engine cowling.

 

[504-2]

YOU DO NOT WANT A FRONT DRIVE,rear wheel drive only.

 

[wayne2]

Agreed! He should be looking for Yard sales!!!