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Just uncrated and assembled my new Cub Cadet RZTS 54. I notice that the front wheels are toed in quite a bit, maybe 3 to 5 degrees. Is this normal?

You have a zero turn mower.
The front wheels are casters.
They can move anywhere.
There is no toe adjustment.
Read the manual that came with it.
Why do I think this is a joke and I got sucked in ?

This should help

Did you notice the steering wheel? It is a zero turn, but the front wheels actually steer with the steering wheel. They are not just casters.

Hi, Hammermechanicman
thank you very much for the link to that video!! Curious where you found that. I service all of my things myself and it looks like those videos could be very helpful . That is quite a complicated procedure, and obviously if I want to fool with that I am going to have to buy all of those test fixtures. Unfortunately the video did not address my question as to whether it is normal for those wheels to be toed in like that. It's actually quite a bit and the mower tends to sidestep a little bit when one wheel gets more traction than the other. I have a hunch it is probably normal, but in any case I'm sure glad I didn't unhook those drag links and try to adjust it!

Your post sounds like you know quite a bit about these things. Do you have any idea if there is a part number for that alignment kit?

All this aside, I want to say that for anybody considering buying a zero turn mower, this thing is nothing short of absolutely awesome. It gets rid of all the disadvantages of a conventional zero turn mower, but still gives you zero turn capability. I have only run mine for about an hour. There is absolutely no learning curve. If you had a garden tractor before you can drive this zero turn with absolutely no practice. You can drive it on the side of a hill and it is not the least bit scary. I tried a couple of zero turns, but my lawn has a lot of slope in places. With no education or advice, I slid the first one into the road ditch after about five minutes and my neighbor had to come and help me pull it out. Then I called our local cub Cadet dealer. He told me it is absolute suicide to drive straight up and down steep slopes with a zero turn, and very dangerous to drive sideways along steep slopes as well. After he saw my lawn he would not sell me a regular zero turn. He strongly recommended this one, but did not have any in stock and could not get any more, so I bought mine online from Mowers Direct. From my limited experience that is a very good company.

If anyone knows anything about the toe in issue, I would appreciate the benefit of your expertise.

Thanks to those of you who have already helped me with this.

Mike

yes the wheels are toed in.
They are geared so unlike a normal rider they can not be misaligned because a drag link gets bent
And the gear is quite coarse so if it was out a tooth they would be pigeon toed big time.
Your car wheels are also toed in slightly.
It helps with the return of the wheels to forward.

The adjustment procedure is complicated because you are timing the hydro controls with the front steering. If all that is wrong is a wheel not straight ahead when the steering wheel is straight you can adjust the link to that wheel or use the pins in the sector gears and the casters and adj the links to fit with the sector gears and caster when they are pinned in place. I have set one of these up without the special tools but you have to know what you are doing.

I agree with your assessment of the RZT slope performance. That was the primary reason I bought one. You may find my initial comments of interest.

Sound someone didn't let the dealer setup the mower.

The 2010 service manual for the S series should help if just an adjustment problem or a bent part. You are going to need two 5/16 pins at least to check alignment.

2010 Z Force S Series Service Manual

I think he wrote he bought the mower from mowers direct so he is the one to setup the mower.

StarTech said:

Sound someone didn't let the dealer setup the mower.

The 2010 service manual for the S series should help if just an adjustment problem or a bent part. You are going to need two 5/16 pins at least to check alignment.

2010 Z Force S Series Service Manual

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Thanks for the service manual! Awesome!

wrldtvlr said:

I agree with your assessment of the RTZ slope performance. That was the primary reason I bought one. You may find my initial comments of interest.

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enjoyed reading your assessment. I have already verified your comment that even if the grass is slightly wet the front wheels will slip sideways on slopes. I have ordered some different front tires that have a more aggressive tread design. This might turn out to be a mistake with the toed in front steering, but it was only 40 bucks and will probably take me a couple of hours to install them. If I don't like them I can take them back off.

Hammermechanicman said:

The adjustment procedure is complicated because you are timing the hydro controls with the front steering. If all that is wrong is a wheel not straight ahead when the steering wheel is straight you can adjust the link to that wheel or use the pins in the sector gears and the casters and adj the links to fit with the sector gears and caster when they are pinned in place. I have set one of these up without the special tools but you have to know what you are doing.

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after watching the video, I am most guided by your last comment here "you have to know what you are doing". This looks like a serious rabbit hole to me if I were to start tinkering with it. That said, I am the kind of person who buys a thing and takes care of it to make it last as long as I can. I bought a John Deere (MTD) L120 at Home Depot in 2004. It has mowed three rough acres for 16 years, has 1500 hrs. on it and I am just now replacing it with this cub cadet. I rebuilt the transmission twice with a kit from MTD, and the steering three times. Sooner or later I will have to learn this procedure. It looks to me like it will be mighty tricky without some sort of a lift and that set of alignment tools.

I have replied to several of the posts separately, but have a couple of additional comments that are unrelated. I specifically asked the dealer if this was an MTD product and he flat stated that it was not. Several things I have read here indicate that it is in fact an MTD product. I find this interesting. If you go to a big box store and look at a $2500 48 inch garden tractor, no matter what brand name is on it it will most likely be MTD. I have seen John Deere, craftsman, Husqvarna and several others that are all the same underneath. I find it interesting that cub cadet seems to be the only manufacturer that offers a steering wheel zero turn, at least from what I can tell doing Internet searches. Do they have some sort of exclusive agreement with MTD?

I have read several posts on other sites stating that other companies have tried to make a steering wheel zero turn and abandoned the effort because the coordination of the hydrostatic drive and the steering was too complicated, and was impossible to keep working for very long due to the need for very precise alignment that couldn't be maintained after a certain amount of wear and tear on the components. I would like to be able to lubricate the gears in this steering arrangement, but they are impossible to access without a very significant amount of disassembly in the case of the model I have. The model in the video someone provided shows taking the screws out of the cover and you can just slide it forward and remove it. Mine does not have that slot in the cover so you have to remove all of the control pedals and several other parts to remove that cover. Curious if anyone else here who has one of these has a hack for lubricating those gears without having to do two hours of work

Once again thanks to everyone for the help getting me up to speed on my new lawnmower.

Best regards

Mike

Richie F said:

You have a zero turn mower.
The front wheels are casters.
They can move anywhere.
There is no toe adjustment.
Read the manual that came with it.
Why do I think this is a joke and I got sucked in ?

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Boy that was really dumb of me to write this.
You learn from your mistakes.
Next time I'll look into a machine other than looking at a picture of it.
"Stupid is, what stupid does".

mboessen said:

I specifically asked the dealer if this was an MTD product and he flat stated that it was not.

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That's going to be a surprise to MTD. They are pretty sure they own the Cub Cadet brand. https://www.mtdproducts.com/en_US/about-us/

mboessen said:

I have read several posts on other sites stating that other companies have tried to make a steering wheel zero turn and abandoned the effort because the coordination of the hydrostatic drive and the steering was too complicated, and was impossible to keep working for very long due to the need for very precise alignment that couldn't be maintained after a certain amount of wear and tear on the components.

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I tend to take statements like this with a large grain of salt. We've established the MTD owns CC, so there's no agreement necessary there. A quick internet search reveals that MTD has an active patent program, and is working on lawn mower steering. Having been a patent portfolio manager for a large technology company, I rather suspect that MTD either refuses to license their steering sync technology to other brands or make it uneconomical to do so.

wrldtvlr said:

That's going to be a surprise to MTD. They are pretty sure they own the Cub Cadet brand. https://www.mtdproducts.com/en_US/about-us/

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indeed. I was not aware that MTD owned the brand. John Deere, for instance sells MTD mowers for their low end offerings, as do many other companies, but I have been told they build their higher end mowers themselves. Our local cub Cadet dealer had a commercial steering wheel zero turn cub Cadet with a 72 inch deck that was over $10,000. At least in my past experience I had not seen MTD involved in building anything like that.

wrldtvlr said:

I tend to take statements like this with a large grain of salt. We've established the MTD owns CC, so there's no agreement necessary there. A quick internet search reveals that MTD has an active patent program, and is working on lawn mower steering. Having been a patent portfolio manager for a large technology company, I rather suspect that MTD either refuses to license their steering sync technology to other brands or make it uneconomical to do so.

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I followed your link, which led to a fairly significant amount of very heavy reading that is pretty much over my head. During my Internet research I saw a smaller (maybe 46 inch cut?) Troybilt steering wheel zero turn. I wonder if MTD made that? My cub cadet dealer told me that Troybilt had a ton of trouble with the steering and that mower is no longer available. I googled them this morning and Troy built shows several models with steering wheels, and they look an awful lot like my cub cadet. I also saw a craftsman with a steering wheel this morning. Two months ago when I started this research, I did not see any of these other brands with a steering wheel in my Google searches. I am finding that the salespeople at most of these dealerships are either not very knowledgeable about the origin of their products, or are not being honest with me.

mboessen said:

indeed. I was not aware that MTD owned the brand. John Deere, for instance sells MTD mowers for their low end offerings, as do many other companies, but I have been told they build their higher end mowers themselves. Our local cub Cadet dealer had a commercial steering wheel zero turn cub Cadet with a 72 inch deck that was over $10,000. At least in my past experience I had not seen MTD involved in building anything like that.

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Kind of the way business works these days. At the low end there's no unique technology, so it's all about who can manufacture the cheapest. MTD could make their own brands only, but that wouldn't be the most efficient way. By doing contract assembly for other brands, they spread the cost of assemby and parts purchasing scale over a much larger base. Companies like Husqvarna do the same thing with their own brands (Husqvarna and Jonsered), as well as the stuff they make for others, so that keeps MTD reasonably honest.

mboessen said:

I followed your link, which led to a fairly significant amount of very heavy reading that is pretty much over my head. During my Internet research I saw a smaller (maybe 46 inch cut?) Troybilt steering wheel zero turn. I wonder if MTD made that? My cub cadet dealer told me that Troybilt had a ton of trouble with the steering and that mower is no longer available. I googled them this morning and Troy built shows several models with steering wheels, and they look an awful lot like my cub cadet. I also saw a craftsman with a steering wheel this morning. Two months ago when I started this research, I did not see any of these other brands with a steering wheel in my Google searches. I am finding that the salespeople at most of these dealerships are either not very knowledgeable about the origin of their products, or are not being honest with me.

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Sorry. If you aren't familiar with how patents are written, they can be very dense. Without the drawings that usually accompany the text, they are impossible to read. That one was just an example that MTD does protect the technology they develop, and mower steering systems are an area they are working on.

MTD owns the Troy-bilt brand, so that dealer is blowing serious smoke. Far more likely that MTD sees steerable ZTRs a feature that they can use to differentiate the Cub Cadet brand, so they don't offer it to Troy-Bilt customers.

The Craftsman brand was purchased by Stanley Black and Decker a few years ago. As far as I can recall, SB&D doesn't have a history of building mowers, so they get MTD or one of the others to build their Craftsman mowers. And they don't all have to come from the same manufacturer.

Wowsers!! MTD owns Troybilt as well???? Holy cow! I have dealt with MTD quite a bit over the last 15 years getting parts for various brands of MTD built garden tractors. I had no idea the size and scope of that company. There are definitely Troy built zero turn mowers on the Internet this morning that have steering wheels. Not sure why I did not see them several months ago, but it is becoming obvious to me that MTD is the only company with a steering wheel zero turn.

Back in 1987 I had a 42 inch cut Firestone brand garden tractor. I bought it used and do not know when it was made, but it was already very old when I got it. There was no Internet in those days and it took me quite a while to discover that the darn thing was actually made by, you guessed it, MTD!! I called them and they actually had some parts available for it, although it took them a while to find them. They actually asked me to send pictures of the mower to them. No one working there at the time even remembered making that mower for Firestone.

mboessen said:

indeed. I was not aware that MTD owned the brand. John Deere, for instance sells MTD mowers for their low end offerings, as do many other companies, but I have been told they build their higher end mowers themselves. Our local cub Cadet dealer had a commercial steering wheel zero turn cub Cadet with a 72 inch deck that was over $10,000. At least in my past experience I had not seen MTD involved in building anything like that.

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Actually, it is a myth that the low end JD mowers are made by MTD. They are made in a JD plant in Greenville Tennessee. Many of the components are the same as the ones MTD uses. Not sure why the dealer would tell you (lie) that the CC mower was not an MTD product. The Craftsman mower is the same as the CC. They are both made by MTD. Black and Decker owns the name Craftsman which is now just a zombie name like Bell&Howell. They just buy stuff and slap the Craftsman name on it to sell it with brand recognition, like Cub Cadet.

Hammermechanicman said:

Actually, it is a myth that the low end JD mowers are made by MTD. They are made in a JD plant in Greenville Tennessee. Many of the components are the same as the ones MTD uses. Not sure why the dealer would tell you (lie) that the CC mower was not an MTD product. The Craftsman mower is the same as the CC. They are both made by MTD. Black and Decker owns the name Craftsman which is now just a zombie name like Bell&Howell. They just buy stuff and slap the Craftsman name on it to sell it with brand recognition, like Cub Cadet.

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I can't speak for all of them, but I have a John Deere L120 purchased in 2004 that I am quite certain was manufactured by MTD. My brother-in-law has a craftsman MTD of the same age, and all of my steering parts are completely interchangeable with his.

mboessen said:

I can't speak for all of them, but I have a John Deere L120 purchased in 2004 that I am quite certain was manufactured by MTD. My brother-in-law has a craftsman MTD of the same age, and all of my steering parts are completely interchangeable with his.

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MTD makes mowers like everyone else with parts from vendors. The more standardized the parts are the cheaper they are. JD and MTD just happend to use the same steering components from asian companies. They are made to compete for the same market so they use some of the same components.

Hammermechanicman said:

MTD makes mowers like everyone else with parts from vendors. The more standardized the parts are the cheaper they are. JD and MTD just happend to use the same steering components from asian companies. They are made to compete for the same market so they use some of the same components.

Z700 Series ZTrak(TM) Zero-Turn Mower

John Deere marked a manufacturing milestone with the 5-millionth unit of Riding Lawn Equipment built at the Power Products factory in Greeneville, TN.

www.deere.com

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Well rats. I have been telling people for years that I thought my L120 was actually an MTD.

mboessen said:

Well rats. I have been telling people for years that I thought my L120 was actually an MTD.

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Actually the frame is identical to the frame used by AYP right down to all of the holes that have nothing in them and lots of AYP parts will also interchange with JD .
It is previously stated, Most mower factories are just assembly plants putting a lot of bought in parts together to make a mower,
There are very few mower factories .
AFAIK Toro , Simplicity & JD make their own ride ons
All the rest come out of either the MTD or AYP factory.
Just because a mower comes out of a particular factory does not mean they own the brand.
Most brands are owned by a separate entity and they pay the factory to make the mower for them because it is too expensive to run their own factory.

The exception to this are the ZTR's which are very cheap to make & right now still have a premium attached to them, but that is erroding very quickly .
The market is quite bi-polar now days
there are really only the two extreames with nothing in between
You have the small, usually family owned companies like Walker , Ventrac & Grasshopper who make nearly all of the frame & fitting and charge a premium price for a premium product thus make a good profit level from small volume sales.
Then the rest who make large volumes of mowers at a very low profit margin so they continually downgrade them because if they don't reach X thousand sales per year they can not cover their fixed costs .
MTD & AYP fit into that catagory and one or both of them will go under in the next few years because Chinese mowers are so much cheaper and the buying public is cheap , greedy & selfish.
Agricultural equipment companies like Toro & JD are in a slightly different class again but for them domestic mowers are a small part of the company and can be subsidised by very expensive high profit farm equipment.

I guess I will have to embarrass myself by asking who is AYP?

mboessen said:

I guess I will have to embarrass myself by asking who is AYP?

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American Yard Products.

Wowsers. About 20 minutes of googling after getting your reply has filled my head with more disinformation than I can shake a stick at. Very confusing.

Goes something like this. Starts out as Allen Bradley. From there sears acquires AB and sells garden tractors as AB suburban. That becomes Roper and then AYP. AYP then sold to Electrolux that spun it off to Husqvarna which became HOP husqvarna outdoor products who is owned by KTM AG. It is hard to keep up with when companies chenge ownership. May have missed a name or two in there.

A lot of what is in the web is out of date as things move very quickly
It has always been a problem that nothing has a creation date so you have no idea if it is current or 20 years old unless there is a date in the text.
Briggs are now bankrupt for instance. They are considering flogging off all of their wholegoods divisions which means in a few years all Briggs branded products will be made in either China or India or the brand will cease to exist all together just like Tecumseh .
Add to that lots of what is on the web is plain wrong
Then there is the distinction between "who makes" & "Who owns ", not the same thing and oft conflaited
And AYP is owned by Husqvarna but the only BRAND they own are Husqvarna & Jonsored all of the others are owned by private companies.
Then you get confusing things like Husqvarna owns the Poulan, & McCulloch chain saw brands, but not the riding mower brands .
When a company goes down the drain, the liquidators are bound to do whatever they can to recoup the most money for the creditors
So when a company like McCulloch fails they can sell the entire name McCulloch or sell each part individually so while you see McCulloch, leaf blowers , chain saws , walk behind mowers & ride on mowers, each is owned by a different group and that also happens internationally as the McCulloch brand name in Australia is not owned by Husqvarna but by a Hong Kong company who used to make McCulloch & some Ryobi products sold in the Asia -Pacific region
The Craftsman brand riding mowers is owned by RGS in Aust & NZ but not anywhere else in the world but RGS do not own any other Craftsman branded product including the push mowers .
The world of big business is very confusing and post Corona it will be vastly different.

Just makes it a nightmare to keep with especially servicing the equipment as to who to buy parts from.

For sure.
I needed a clutch kit for my IH 184 tractor. Decided to go with OEM from Case IH and not the aftermarket one from India for $150 that looked sketchy. The OEM was $325 and was the exact same India clutch kit in a Case IH box. Sice it was special order paid in advance i had to eat it. Last part i bought from Case IH.

Hammermechanicman said:

I needed a clutch kit for my IH 184 tractor. Decided to go with OEM from Case IH and not the aftermarket one from India for $150 that looked sketchy. The OEM was $325 and was the exact same India clutch kit in a Case IH box.

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Have some experience with this on the corporate side. The financial types see inventory as evil. It messes up their precious financial ratios. So frequently, as soon as a product goes out of production, a company will sell off all the remaining parts stock to a third party and license them to manage any future sales. Those third party companies are working on paper thin margins and that forces them to keep inventories as low as possible. Unless demand is unusually high, there's often a single manufacturing source that provides both the branded and generic part. Even if the factory swears with pinkie fingers they won't sell off label, somehow it happens.

It comes back the profit to equity ratio.
A totally meaningless measurement to a business but one that is used by managers to justify big bonuses

Hi all:
not sure if anyone is following this thread anymore, but I thought I would post an update in case it would prove useful for anyone else purchasing one of these RZT SX 54 mowers. I started this thread because I was concerned that the front wheels appeared to not be correctly aligned. With just a measuring tape between the front and rear of the tires my front wheels were toed in about an inch. The general consensus I got on this discussion thread was that it was probably normal. Last week I removed the basically slick factory tires from the front and put something on there with better tread. This made the front wheels literally chew grass as I was driving, and they would leave tracks in the gravel driveway. I called our local dealership and took the mower in for them to look at. The service manager took one glance at the front wheels and immediately said they were not right. They realigned the steering, and now the front wheels are parallel and the mower drives much better. I thought maybe it was shipping damage, but they said there were no damaged parts and it was just incorrectly aligned at the factory.

I used to have a model very similar to the Cub Cadet RZT 54 in all characteristics and I also had a problem with the deviation slightly more than you have. It was somewhere 5-7 degrees, for sure. After the inspection, I realized that this is not a mechanical problem and you need to look for the problem in the electronics. Since I'm not very experienced in this area I called an electronics expert and he said that you need to replace the Controller like here https://www.automationstop.com/shop/allen-bradley-plc/1764/1764-LRP and after that, everything will be aligned. After work, everything really fell into place.