well my mower packed up and need a new one and im looking at 2 mowers 1321 and 1294 one is john deere jx90cb and the other honda hrh536hx just wanted to no what to go for and why needs to work in the wet too

On Apr 12, 7:02*pm, garethhsaunders garethhsaunders.
wrote:
well my mower packed up and need a new one and im looking at 2 mowers
1321 and 1294 one is john deere jx90cb and the other honda hrh536hx just
wanted to no what to go for and why needs to work in the wet too

--
garethhsaunders

I had a Honda Harmony from about 10 years ago. It some aspects
it was the best mower I ever had. It was selling for around $550 at
Home Depot at the time, but I got if for around $350 because it
was end of season. It had a dual mulching blade. The cut and
finished look it gave the lawn was the best I have ever seen. It
did an excellent job of mulching the grass into very small pieces.
The mower was also quiet. The only problem was that at about
6 years, the transmission failed, rendering the self-propel useless.
I'm pretty good at fixing most anything, but this thing was a
real bitch to take apart and involved a whole lot of little parts
that would have to all go back correctly.

A new tranny would cost $135. Keep in mind that just for the
part, with me putting it in. If you took it to a repair shop you
could add in 2 hours of labor.
That left me with the decision of
whether to buy another one or get a new mower. Given the
cost and then the difficulty of putting it all back together,
I decided to get a new Sears one. Found a guy selling it locally
for $160
on Ebay. About 4 year later, it's still mostly working fine. One
day it too stopped moving. It took two screws and 10 mins to
locate the reason. Unlike Honda, this design does not use a
tranny. They adjust speed with a belt slip pulley system and
the tension spring had broken. With a pair of pliers and some
wire, I fashioned a temporary repair and was on my way
again. Still haven't ordered a new spring, but it's only a
few bucks.

On the downside, it does not leave as nice a cut as the
Honda did and it makes more noise. On the plus side,
the variable speed belt drive works fine, probably like it
better than Honda which had 3 fixed speeds you could
select. And the engine has significantly more power
and goes through heavier grass where the Honda
would start to bog down and stall.

Overall, especially given the bad tranny design and
prices, IMO, the Sears is the better deal. The
Sears bought in a store would have been about 1/2
the price of the Honda. How Honda's are built
and last today versus 10 years ago, can't tell you,
but that's my 2 cents.