Here's my take on the whole thing. The current lawn tractors are all very reliable considering this, These machines take a lot of abuse even on a flat, level, smooth yard. Think about all these tractors take. 1st off you are normally running a air-cooled engine a design that in some ways trace back to the 1930's and not much in technical advancment did not happen until the last 5 or so years.
You are normally depending on either a belt drive (the vast majority) or shaft drive. The decks are almost universal in using a belt to drive them.
The blades are generally limited in speed for the home owner but they have to be going very fast cut the grass very good. The average blade is probably going at least 200 MPH (I think).
The deck are definely taking a beating on all the grass and the sand and anything else beating on the underside of deck.
These are no matter what the name or brand the same (except Deere:truth: ) Yeah different assmebly techniques but they all do the same thing cut grass and do some light hauling.
The ratings on CU tend to be a little bit off in my opinion but they do provide a service in the fact they do report and do survey the members for problem areas.
I have a 10 year old car with over 200,000 miles and the CU rated as model to Avoid guess what I bought this car new and only last month the transmission started to act up and I have had to replace it. The car is 1994 Plymouth Acclaim and it is the daily driver.:crazysun:
