Just thought I'd give a heads up here. I recently purchased a Raptor 42 (Kohler version). It has only 13 hours of use. Noticed that my grass was getting scalped on one side. Stopped and noticed that the nut (part# 016899) had vibrated itself off and was gone dropping the right side of the deck onto the grass. Of course, along with the nut, the spacer bushing (part# 601839) was also gone.
I just can't understand how they can engineer something like that. I owned a cheap Craftsman tractor for 19 years and nothing like that ever happened. The Craftsman tractor's suspension points were all secured with wire clips (5 to be exact). The Raptor has no way to prevent that nut from vibrating off over time. They really need to revisit that design! I might drill a small hole through the end of the bolt and install my own wire clip.
Unfortunately I didn't notice until I had scalped 3 big brown rows in my front yard!
I just can't understand how they can engineer something like that. I owned a cheap Craftsman tractor for 19 years and nothing like that ever happened. The Craftsman tractor's suspension points were all secured with wire clips (5 to be exact). The Raptor has no way to prevent that nut from vibrating off over time. They really need to revisit that design! I might drill a small hole through the end of the bolt and install my own wire clip.
Unfortunately I didn't notice until I had scalped 3 big brown rows in my front yard!