Not worth the money...
Written: Jun 24 '06 (Updated Jul 18 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Runs quiet and clean, nimble and light, easy to start, feature rich
Cons: Poor mulching: very poor and uneven lawn appearance with one mowing pass at 3" height
The Bottom Line: No, if you are at all interested in mulching due to the poor cut. I wouldn't risk the restocking fee unless your grass is very short and thick!
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| gsocling's Full Review: Craftsman 6.75 Hp 21" Deck 3-In-1 Bagging-Mulching... |
Background:
Had a six year old MTD, a very good mower, which had the timing key break. Seeing as it perfectly good but getting older, I gifted it to my father who had the same model but a slightly worse for wear unit, and is in general handy. So, I started looking for a new unit.
Research:
I used CR mostly, between CR giving the thumbs up and 'Craftsman' being what one would think is a good brand, I thought I was making a safe choice, a quality product by a big brand using modern design and components at a decent price. My recommendation? Dig deeper...
Experience:
Out of Box: The unit came fully assembled, which is a nice bonus. It also included oil (too much, as it turned out, regardless of the blurb in the manual). After finishing the setup, I started it up (with two very easy pulls, not bad at all) and let it run for a couple minutes. I then started my first cut.
Mowing: This unit is easy to maneuver, feeling slightly lighter than my old unit.
My old mower had a 5HP B&S engine, it was very powerful for nearly everything I did (mulching heavy grass, mostly). The new mower, with a larger engine, starts whimpering for mercy WAY before the old unit did. I'm really surprised they call this 6.75HP, feels more like 4HP (or less). It does have some backbone when you really bog it down, but it really sounds like it is struggling, perhaps due to the advanced emission controls?
The mulching flap is the default cover for the side of the deck (the side discharge deflector comes completely off), which allows you to cut as close as possible with both sides of the unit.
The wheels raise and lower via the 'industry standard' locking tabs on each wheel.
The handle is slightly uncomfortable, as the emergency blade stop bulges out the top of the handle when pulled back for operation.
The Cut: The evenness of cut on this unit is TERRIBLE. It looks like I'm using an OLD butter knife to cut the blades one at a time, and then getting bored and missing half of them. I was astounded (if you can use astounded when you feel like you've been taken for over $200) at how bad the cut was. The grass wasn't particularly thick, it was dry, and the blade was brand new. And it looked like the mower was just knocking it over instead of cutting it. Oddly, when I pull the mower backwards, it seems to do a much more even job cutting. An additional problem is that the unevenness isn't biased towards one side, so I can't overlap the cuts, I have to actually mow twice.
Summary:
I checked my blade, it is wonderfully sharp. I've considered the situation carefully and read around. I have come to believe that the mower deck was not tested after they designed it, and it has some terrible flaw which is preventing the mulching mowing from working correctly.
It appears this has much to do with the height of the cut, as I cut my northern grass to around 3". The lower I set the cutting height, the better it seems to work (especially around 25% from 'bottom' and lower). Perhaps this would work great in Florida, but not on my lawn...
I'm not interested in the side discharge nor the bagging (nor have I tested them, so I don't know if that would fix the cut at higher levels), so unfortunately for me, I am going to pay a 15% restocking fee for the experience of finding out Craftsman makes poor mowers.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
gsocling
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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