New Guy and a little buyer's remorse

Hey all, glad to be a part of this forum! I've helped my uncle and father mow commercially for years mostly using Walker brand mowers. I recently bought a house on a corner lot and decided to make the jump to a rider. After tons of looking I decided on a John deere d110. For the price, it was everything I needed and I had never owned a deer before. I was pretty jazzed, and even bought a JD hat to go with it. Fast forward to 1.0 hours of usage, the motor is leaking oil! Right under the output shaft, oil is dripping on the pulleys, flinging it everywhere. I took it to the dealer and they currently have it. Is this a sign of things to come? I can't lie but I feel extremely disappointed with the mower right now. It runs, cuts, turns great, but it's bleeding with 1 hour of usage. The mower has literally spent more time on a trailer than being used.

Someone help me feel better about my purchase bc I'm tossing the idea of selling it once the warranty work is complete.

Thanks in advance -t

whitepony04 said:

Hey all, glad to be a part of this forum! I've helped my uncle and father mow commercially for years mostly using Walker brand mowers. I recently bought a house on a corner lot and decided to make the jump to a rider. After tons of looking I decided on a John deere d110. For the price, it was everything I needed and I had never owned a deer before. I was pretty jazzed, and even bought a JD hat to go with it. Fast forward to 1.0 hours of usage, the motor is leaking oil! Right under the output shaft, oil is dripping on the pulleys, flinging it everywhere. I took it to the dealer and they currently have it. Is this a sign of things to come? I can't lie but I feel extremely disappointed with the mower right now. It runs, cuts, turns great, but it's bleeding with 1 hour of usage. The mower has literally spent more time on a trailer than being used.

Someone help me feel better about my purchase bc I'm tossing the idea of selling it once the warranty work is complete.

Thanks in advance -t

Click to expand...

Sorry about your situation, I always held JD in the high regards, TILL I started seeing them in the "Big-Box Stores"
I figured something had to give,... seems Quality Control is a lost procedure these days, not just on mowers either. Hoping you derive at at a satisfactory outcome.

I hope so too.

Anything you sit your bum on after the Walkers will be a let down.
Walkers are hand made with a workforce that have a family connection to the name on the side of the mower and this makes a big difference.
Loyalty now days is fairly well limited to your dog so from a companies point of view it is price. Low price low profit margin high volume.
Every tractor company used to make mowers with the misty eyed vision of dad climbing down off his brand name harvester getting in his same brand name quad driving back to the homestead where mum is mowing the grass around the house with the same brand mower.
However economic reality smashes this image and the boards of most ag equipment dropped their mower lines decades ago because 99% of the population drives their car home from the office thus have no connection with the "Grand Old Brand Name".
They will buy whatever appears to have the most features with the cheapest price so they can brag to their fellow office workers about how smart they are in getting such a bargan mower.

Thus to sell to office working acreage owners with no mechanical apitude you have to go cheap and cheap is cheap in more ways than one.
JD do have their own spec engine made by B & S which is better than the std B & S engine , however saying they have a forged crank made from a better quality of steel than the std B & S crank does not carry favour with B & S.
Thus while your engine was made with closer fitting and slightly upgraded parts from the Std B & S engine, it is still nothing more than one of a run of 16,000 as far as Minguel is concerned and he just smacks the oil seals in from the time the start whistel goes till the knock off whistle blows.

When you get underneath you can see them getting cheaper year after year.
Still better than a lot of the mowers that come out of the AYP factory.

To get a "real" Deer you have to go to a model that is only sold in mower & farm shops and not at Lowes or other big box stores.
However they come at real JD prices which most home owners will not pay because very few can recognise good quality any more.

Look at the price dad paid for the Walkers and when they are ready to retire to domestic use they will still cost more than a new Deer from a big box store.

I realize it's not Walker quality but granted it's a tenth of the price. I figured selecting a JD over a Troy bilt or Murray would net me a little reliability and quality. I guess I was wrong. I did however expect a $1700 mower to last more than an hour.

whitepony04 said:

I realize it's not Walker quality but granted it's a tenth of the price. I figured selecting a JD over a Troy built or Murray would net me a little reliability and quality. I guess I was wrong. I did however expect a $1700 mower to last more than an hour.

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Well it is a problem with the engine, not the mower.
If you have a think back, the retail price of the engine alone is $ 1500
the transmission retails at $ 700.
So those 2 parts bought retail with regular retail mark up is more than you paid for the entire unit retail.
Nothing much under $ 4000 is a long life quality product.

Now I fix them I don't use them & I do see a lot better quality of build than the other mowers that come out of the same factory.
However they are built down to a price people will pay not up to a quality level.
Top of the cheapies does not make it top quality, simply better than the rest in the same price bracket.

Down here it is $ 4000 the equivalent Husqvarna is $ 3600 the Craftsman is $ 3500 the McCulloch is $ 3200.
As you go down the price scale, the paint gets ticker & the metal gets thinner.

The Sthil shops sell a Chinese brand that sells for $ 1999
and the ag supply shops sell the Chinese Murrays for $ 1795.

Most of these are good for 2 to 4 years before the frames crack everywhere but the owners go right back out & buy another one because they are cheap.

So yes you are quite right to feel dissapointed, but they took the mower back, no questions & fixed it and that is a big difference down here with buying JD.
No arguements it gets fixed and the parts are here in a warehouse.

I am currently replaceing a transmission in a LA155.
Tuff Torq quoted me a price $ 50 dearer than the JD shop and a wait of 5 weeks.
The JD shop had both the entire tranny and the rebuild kit in stock and that costs a ot more money than most people can appreciate.

I really appreciate your responses. I bought the mower at a big box store but what sold me on the JD was the fact that a local reputable JD dealer does all the setup and warranty work.

Not trying to be demeaning or smart although re reading the replies they do sound a little like that.
In 5 years you will start to find out why the Deer was the better mower.
We had some really big fires through my work footprint back in 99
A few of my customers got the insurance companies to fork out for Honda ride ons or top shelf Deers
These both came out of the same factory as well don't know if it was a Honda factory or a Deer factory.
All of those Hondas & Deers are running like a top.
None have required anything more than routine service part replacement.
From the same fires several bought Murry Sentinals these are still running but have pretty much done their time, all the holes are flogged out oval and the hydros are packing it in one after the other.
Apart from the local mowers, Deutcher, Cox & Greenfields, everything else bought after the fires is long since dead and burried.
All the MTD's Huskies, McCullochs, Yard machines, Yardmans, Poulans, Ropers all consigned to the Sims bin.
Now those Hondas & Deers cost more back in 99 as the smallest 2 seat car , the Suzuki ( Swift down here ) and slightly less than the Diahatsu Cherade ( another 2 seater ).
If this gives you some sort of perspective about what a long life quality mower should be costing.

So don't feel bad about your purchase.
Getting a dud one is a bummer.

I didn't take any of your comments as rude. I'll get the oil issue fixed, if more problems arise, I'll put a sale sign on it and chalk it up to a lesson learned. I'll post an update when I get it back.

:welcome:

I'm going to move this thread over to our John Deere section.

Here's hoping that yours will keep working well into the future.