On Aug 28, 8:33*am, Ray K wrote:
wrote:

Lowes should be a lot cheaper than that. I just bought a 21 Troy
Bilt/Honda RWD for $350.
The FWD was cheaper but they don't do well climbing hills.

About 1/4 of my 12,000-sq-ft lawn is on a 17-degree slope. Even with my
FWD, I don't have a problem. Maybe it because of the large rear wheels;
maybe it's because I push slightly upward on the handles, which forces
more weight onto the front driving wheels.

My concern with rear drive is making an abrupt u-turn at the edges of
the lawn. With my FWD, all I do is press down on the handle to lift the
front wheels off the lawn, and then I make an abrupt u-turn. Seems to me
that a RWD would fight me.

Ray

I have a Honda Harmony torn apart, sitting in the garage with the same
problem, failed tranny. The engine runs great though, but the tranny
shows you that Honda ain't all many think it is. The tranny failed
after about 7 years use on a 10,000 sq ft lawn. The pros to the
Honda were it's less noisey and the mulching cut was the best I've
seen. I bought a Craftsman for $160 on Ebay 2 years ago. I'ts a
quarter the price of a new Honda. Pros are that it has significantly
more power and so far is running great. Cons are that it doesn't
leave as nice a cut and it's a bit noisier. Recently the drive went
out on it too. But, it just a broken spring that so far I managed to
mend and will replace when I have to. That's an advantage too. It
uses the variable speed belt/pulley type drive system instead of the
tranny. New tranny for the Honda would have been $130 and having
taken it apart, it's a very complex re-assembly. Likely I would get
it back together and working correctly, but decided given the choices
and costs, it wasn't worth the risk. Figured I might come across one
on Ebay on the cheap one day, but so far, no luck.