I went ahead and bought a WORLDLAWN DIAMONDBACK 52 INCH ZERO TURN.

[NavyNancy]

Been reading about zero turns for a few weeks and did not want to get the very cheap big box brands in the 2-3 k price ranges.

I found someone that was only 10 minutes from my house, that bought this diamndback new, last year - its a 2022 model with only 18 hours on it. He moved to a new home and now only has a small yard and cant use this worldlawn anymore. I called 3 dealers in my area and they said that these sell for around $5900 out the door right now. I got this 2022 model for $4250.

It has the kawasaki engine, which I was told was very important, because some model years had a different engine and had issues. I weigh 240 lbs and stood on the deck and the deck did not have any bend/ give at all. The deck is very heavy duty built. It has the servicable hydro drive units that are of solid quality , dual gas tanks , 1 on the left side and 1 on the right side for weight balance . I checked the pulleys and they seemed very heavy duty . I am aware that some of the metal/ frame is built overseas but those items seem much better built then usual residential grade stuff.

I also like the manual foot operation to raise and lower the deck along with the pin adjustment on the console to adjust deck heights in 1/2 inch increments. The gas gauge is an easy to see, window float style. I like this type of stuff because its simple and easy to use.

I was told to use 20-50 weight kawasaki oil that has the zinc additive in both the engine and the 2 hydro drives , but im not sure if that is to be used just for initial break in or to use that oil permanently.

Mower seems to run strong , is fast and it has 4 heavy duty springs under the seat for comfort.

Hopefully I can get at least 10 years of use out of it for my 3 acres of land, without any catastrophic issues/ breakdowns.

 

[NavyNancy]

Heres some photos .

 

[bertsmobile1]

Sorry to rain on your parade but unless World Lawn has done a lot of work on their quality in the past few years I will never touch one again .
Finally in frustration I told the two customers who owned them I will no longer service them as in my opinion the mower was not only poorly made but also dangerous to use.
The blades appear to be plain high carbon steel & regularly fractured in a brittle mode so go flying out the side of the mower.
All of the spindle pulleys detached from their bosses and many of the welds cracked
The welding that you can see from the top is beautiful
The welds that I saw underneath are all very sub standard
Finally the total lack of any unique parts made them more trouble than they were worth
And their line of pretend Honda walk behinds are even worse .
We call them "mudguards ( fenders to some )" pretty on the top-shit underneath
They remind me of the junk we get when some one takes a quality product to a third world country and request them to "make one that looks exactly like this as cheap as possible".
I did the inital services on both of them
All of the filters were not genuine Kawakasi but bad factory seconds from one of the Chinese knock off companies which made me doubt if the engine was in fact genuine and not a counterfeit
I tried to check with my Kawakasi distributor and the reply "we can not verify imported engines " was not very encouraging .
By the time I dumped them both of the hydros were leaking on one and the top seal was leaking on another
FWIW they were a Cobra & a Viper and both were on large ex-pasture properties of 10 & 30 acres
If you do a search on the web about World Lawn on mower forums and consummer complaint forums you will see they had a very bad reputation
Cheap in every sense of the word and in my opinion deliberatley deceptive as well so the really stingly cheap skates rave about how much they saved comparred to quality mowers like JD & Toro .
There is a reason why they named the models after snakes because they are Snake Oil
Your money would have been far better spent on repairing that JD F525 in the background .
When I went to the importer to get a full set of spindle bearings, firstly he did not have a full set and secondly he said "the bearings are junk and you have to pull the seals wash the bearings & put better grease in there "

 

[NavyNancy]

Sorry to rain on your parade but unless World Lawn has done a lot of work on their quality in the past few years I will never touch one again .
Finally in frustration I told the two customers who owned them I will no longer service them as in my opinion the mower was not only poorly made but also dangerous to use.
The blades appear to be plain high carbon steel & regularly fractured in a brittle mode so go flying out the side of the mower.
All of the spindle pulleys detached from their bosses and many of the welds cracked
The welding that you can see from the top is beautiful
The welds that I saw underneath are all very sub standard
Finally the total lack of any unique parts made them more trouble than they were worth
And their line of pretend Honda walk behinds are even worse .
We call them "mudguards ( fenders to some )" pretty on the top-shit underneath
They remind me of the junk we get when some one takes a quality product to a third world country and request them to make "one that looks exactly like this as cheap as possible.
I did the inital services on both of them
All of the filters were not genuine Kawakasi but bad factory seconds from one of the Chinese knock off companies which made be doubt if the engine was in fact genuine and not a counterfeit
By the time I dumped them both of the hydros were leaking on one and the top seal was leaking on another
FWIW they were a Cobra & a Viper and both were on large ex-pasture properties of 10 & 30 acres
If you do a search on the web about World Lawn on mower forums and consummer complaint forums you will see they had a very bad reputation
Cheap in every sense of the word and in my opinion deliberatley deceptive as well .

I did some searching online and did not find much about them on the lawnmower discussion forums. In fact, much of the few conversations about this brand, often ended up being about how unpatriotic it was to purchase them due to them having parts made in china.

I will only be using it for my 3 acres which is relatively flat land and absent of rocks, thick twigs, etc so hopefully this diamondback will holdup fairly well. I did not inspect the welds underneath the deck, but the thickness of the deck itself was impressive...certainly much better than local bigbox store mowers. I did realize that purchasing this was a bit of a gamble, beings they do not seem to be a big seller, but they have been around for many years now and the engine, hydro drive pumps are supposed to be solid quality and the pulleys looked to be well made. If it turns out to be a total piece of crap, I will definitely make a thread about it. Maybe the company has greatly improved the quality over the last 2-3 years ? Time will tell.

 

[NavyNancy]

I noticed you mention the blades being brittle and flying apart. I did inspect the blades on this ,and they sure seemed to be heavy duty , but then again, that doesnt mean they wont be brittle but they were surely made of thick- heavy steel. I would think, if this brand had alot of issue with the blades flying apart, that woulda been a huge liability concern and they woulda been sued or at least, fixed the issue very quickly. Its one thing to make a mower that is unreliable due to poor manufacture of the engine , but that doesnt often result in a personal injury issue. Your experience about the blades flying apart would be a very risky and dangerous fault that could easily cost a company 10s of millions of dollars in lawsuits.

 

[NavyNancy]

Sorry to rain on your parade but unless World Lawn has done a lot of work on their quality in the past few years I will never touch one again .
Finally in frustration I told the two customers who owned them I will no longer service them as in my opinion the mower was not only poorly made but also dangerous to use.
The blades appear to be plain high carbon steel & regularly fractured in a brittle mode so go flying out the side of the mower.
All of the spindle pulleys detached from their bosses and many of the welds cracked
The welding that you can see from the top is beautiful
The welds that I saw underneath are all very sub standard
Finally the total lack of any unique parts made them more trouble than they were worth
And their line of pretend Honda walk behinds are even worse .
We call them "mudguards ( fenders to some )" pretty on the top-shit underneath
They remind me of the junk we get when some one takes a quality product to a third world country and request them to "make one that looks exactly like this as cheap as possible".
I did the inital services on both of them
All of the filters were not genuine Kawakasi but bad factory seconds from one of the Chinese knock off companies which made me doubt if the engine was in fact genuine and not a counterfeit
I tried to check with my Kawakasi distributor and the reply "we can not verify imported engines " was not very encouraging .
By the time I dumped them both of the hydros were leaking on one and the top seal was leaking on another
FWIW they were a Cobra & a Viper and both were on large ex-pasture properties of 10 & 30 acres
If you do a search on the web about World Lawn on mower forums and consummer complaint forums you will see they had a very bad reputation
Cheap in every sense of the word and in my opinion deliberatley deceptive as well so the really stingly cheap skates rave about how much they saved comparred to quality mowers like JD & Toro .
There is a reason why they named the models after snakes because they are Snake Oil
Your money would have been far better spent on repairing that JD F525 in the background .
When I went to the importer to get a full set of spindle bearings, firstly he did not have a full set and secondly he said "the bearings are junk and you have to pull the seals wash the bearings & put better grease in there "

The F525 I own runs and mows perfectly. It has about 780 hours on it. The 1 real negative of it, is it is quite slow...top forward speed around 4-5 mph. That also has a Kawasaki engine on it, but it is a 1 cylinder, which is often frowned upon by mower/ engine mechanics for these heavy mowers.

Hopefully the worldlawn company has improved their brand in the last few years. I will say this, I think the brand name is bloody awful and forgetful....WORLDLAWN....horrible product name IMHO.

 

[NavyNancy]

The company claims they have " triple layer spindle support" on this diamondback mower, which I assume means that the area where the spindle bolts to the deck, is reinforced with thicker steel/layers. I would imagine that is a nice feature also ? If I get a chance this week, I will inspect the uinderneath of the deck welds, to see if they look shabby. ..but as you mentioned, the top of the deck looks fabulous and very stout.

 

[NavyNancy]

heres a screenshot of the specs of this specific model.

7 gauge steel deck, is also impressive, IMHO...and with a dry weight of 950 lbs, I would imagine its much more heavy duty then the average $3000 mower at lowes/ home depot ? It would seem difficult to get a dry weigh of almost 1000 lbs, if the mower used mostly plastic and thin gauge cheap steel or pot metal ? I will use the mower the rest of the summer and give updates if problems arise....I guess I kinda elected myself to be a guinea pig for this mower but I would not have gave $4250 for it, unless my initial inspection was positive.

 

[bertsmobile1]

I have all of the specs here
The history goes like this
The original factory , Encore was run so badly it went broke
So a bunch of the managers hot footed it to China with a brief case of design drawings in the hope of resurecting it using a knock down Chinese mower that was reassembled in the USA so could be sold as "made in the USA"
And this is exactly what happened , the old factory site had not been sold so they leased it but because they did not have the money to buy the old brand names from the liquidators they used World Lawn which is part of the name of the manufacturing company in China ,(Jiangsu World Plant-Protecting Machinery Co., Ltd ) which in itself is part of the massive "World" group which was owned by the " people " which is cover for the Chinese Communist Party
Because they were not good managers, and the product was trash it flopped big time so the Chinese company took control , relaunched the Encore brand .
The truth of what exactly happened will eventually come out but the history seems to change every few days
Encore say they never stopped manufacture so they can claim a long heritage ( since 1988 ) but their distribution network down here closed in 2011 and did not reappear till 2019 so from 2011 to 2019 we had stand alone World Lawn mowers down here and rebadged World Lawns locally branded . In 2019 there was a promo that Encore brand was going to relaunch in Australia but to date no dealers have been announced .
One of my wholesalers sells rebadged Encores under their Bushranger brand but that is the only presence I am aware of.
Now the local US dealers will have a better understanding than I do from Australia

As for the materials
you can get strong parts by using high quality alloy steel and make them thin or use low grade low strength steel & make them thicker
Think of the difference between High Speed Tool Steel tap & dies which are expensive , last forever & are resistant to fracture compared to high carbon steel ones that are 1/3 the price, go blunt quickly and break easily .
So that is the difference
People who do not understand materials technology associate thickness with quality because they are used to things getting thinner & cheaper till they fall apart the day you unwrap them
But when it come to things like flat plate thicker is always cheaper stock that welds poorly fatigues quickly but does not wear out your tooling because it is soft & weak so to get the same strength you need to increase the section thickness which makes using thick low grade plate a lot lot cheaper , particularly if it is

Down here 2 local brands, Parklander & Rover both sold rebadged World Lawn ZTR's and both dropped them in a couple of years and went to MTD .
That speaks a lot about the quality & durability of the World Lawn products .
Wholesale prices of the World Lawn were in fact cheaper than the wholesale prices of MTD which are the cheapest USA product by a long way in every sense of the word .

Now that the company is bereft of the original managers who may have been milking it for all that they could the quality may have increased

 

[Tiger Small Engine]

I have all of the specs here
The history goes like this
The original factory , Encore was run so badly it went broke
So a bunch of the managers hot footed it to China with a brief case of design drawings in the hope of resurecting it using a knock down Chinese mower that was reassembled in the USA so could be sold as "made in the USA"
And this is exactly what happened , the old factory site had not been sold so they leased it but because they did not have the money to buy the old brand names from the liquidators they used World Lawn which is part of the name of the manufacturing company in China ,(Jiangsu World Plant-Protecting Machinery Co., Ltd ) which in itself is part of the massive "World" group which was owned by the " people " which is cover for the Chinese Communist Party
Because they were not good managers, and the product was trash it flopped big time so the Chinese company took control , relaunched the Encore brand .
The truth of what exactly happened will eventually come out but the history seems to change every few days
Encore say they never stopped manufacture so they can claim a long heritage ( since 1988 ) but their distribution network down here closed in 2011 and did not reappear till 2019 so from 2011 to 2019 we had stand alone World Lawn mowers down here and rebadged World Lawns locally branded . In 2019 there was a promo that Encore brand was going to relaunch in Australia but to date no dealers have been announced .
One of my wholesalers sells rebadged Encores under their Bushranger brand but that is the only presence I am aware of.
Now the local US dealers will have a better understanding than I do from Australia

As for the materials
you can get strong parts by using high quality alloy steel and make them thin or use low grade low strength steel & make them thicker
Think of the difference between High Speed Tool Steel tap & dies which are expensive , last forever & are resistant to fracture compared to high carbon steel ones that are 1/3 the price, go blunt quickly and break easily .
So that is the difference
People who do not understand materials technology associate thickness with quality because they are used to things getting thinner & cheaper till they fall apart the day you unwrap them
But when it come to things like flat plate thicker is always cheaper stock that welds poorly fatigues quickly but does not wear out your tooling because it is soft & weak so to get the same strength you need to increase the section thickness which makes using thick low grade plate a lot lot cheaper , particularly if it is

Down here 2 local brands, Parklander & Rover both sold rebadged World Lawn ZTR's and both dropped them in a couple of years and went to MTD .
That speaks a lot about the quality & durability of the World Lawn products .
Wholesale prices of the World Lawn were in fact cheaper than the wholesale prices of MTD which are the cheapest USA product by a long way in every sense of the word .

Now that the company is bereft of the original managers who may have been milking it for all that they could the quality may have increased

That is a FR series Kawasaki engine, which is their residential version, good engine. World Lawn has very sporadic and sparse dealer support, parts availability can be difficult in some cases, cheaper overall quality, and many shops will NOT work on them. In a stock market sense, it is a no buy.