Hi everyone
Recently the Fiance's parents went away on holidays, so I mowed their lawn
for them using their mower.
It is only a few months old, a Toro self propelled one (Pace something,
forget exact name)
The only self propelled mower I had ever used were the greens walk behinds
at work, which have no real safety mechanism in them other than put it in
gear and steer it, and whether your hands are on it or not, it will keep
going.
Anyway, this Toro cut well, but a few things I found annoying with it.
1) To start it you had to pull and hold a lever on the handle, then pull
start it. Let go at anytime and the engine stops
Once started as you pushed on the handle (like pushing a normal mower) it
would self propel. The harder you pushed (eg long grass, up hill) the more
it would self propel, hence on a slight downhill run it would only drive
itself as much as need be a good idea I thought BUT
2) If you had to leave the mower for whatever reason, letting go of the
lever the engine would stop. Ok for a new motor, but what about when it gets
older and hard to start.
3) Each wheel height could be individually set, why I don't know. It just
made setting the height more fiddly, time consuming, and to go from the
lowest height, to the highest, it had to be done in 2 goes. The reason for
this is going from one extreme to the other in height would cause the height
adjusters to "stick" a little, so you had to do it in 2 goes.
4) Mower had a fixed rev setting.
5) The "gearbox" seemed to make pushing the mower around without the engine
running (e.g. in and out of shed, etc) harder than your "normal" mowers.
6) Finally, the catcher was made of fabric, it was hard to clean, with grass
getting trapped in seams, which will eventually rot it. Actually probably
the best way to clean the catcher is let the grass dry out, then use
compressed air. A hose was a bad idea.
7) The catcher wasn't all that easy to remove.
A flap in the side of the cutting deck, which was spring loaded had me
stuffed. I had no idea what it was for. Not much good for cleaning with a
hose as having this thing running, holding the lever on, and trying to hose
under the cutting deck would be near impossible.

We use Toro's at work, and the quality seems very high. Just a pity about
this mower.
Some things on this mower were annyoying, others just made it harder to do
the job and being 28yr old I thought I'd hate to be about 70 using this
thing, or have medical problems. For a mower that is supposed to make the
job easier, it did when it come to mowing, it sort of made things easier,
but setting up, cleaning, and moving it round didn't.
Give me a normal 4 stroke, plastic catcher type anyday. I just caution
anyone to consider all things before purchasing any self propelled mowers
after this experience, and to totally stay away from material type catcher
bags.
Any comments, Len esp?

Cheers
Andrew