Thanks for the advice. Makes sense. I knew Kubotas were very reliable. How involved are the mower decks to get on and off?
On the Kubota (at least on my 8 year old model), for removal:
1) flip the 4 mower casters 90 deg,
2) lower the mower to the ground,
3) pull 2 rear pins and 1 front pin, which removes the front mower mount,
4) unclip the pto shaft from the mower,
5) roll the mower to the side.
For installing, start at 5 and go to 1. Removing takes 2 minutes, installing, maybe 5 minutes. Worst part: hooking up/removing the pto shaft, because you can't see unless you lie down and it's lubed with grease. All the rest: If you can't do the rest of it, you might give a bit more thought to whether operating equipment like this is right for you, because there are 1,000 other things you'll be doing with it that are more challenging.
That said, the new Deere series does have what looks like a really easy on-off design for their mower deck. If you
don't want to do the Kubota deck change (not the same as being incapable of doing it!), that's an appealing alternative. In fact, the older I get, the more appealing it seems!
Kubota just introduced a new BX line and, interestingly, did not choose to change their simple, rugged, and probably less costly, mower setup to match the easy on/off configuration Deere offers. I suspect something like the Deere design is mechanically more complex and time will tell how it holds up and whether it brings in more customers.
