Just saw my first $80,000 lawnmower

[whitetiger]

The F series is all drive shaft and the blades are driven with oil filled right angle gearboxes. No belts

Most of us realize that you have a serious problem with the truth and facts, but:
Except for the fact that only the center blade is driven by an oil-filled gearbox. A belt drives the outer blades and they have greaseable ball bearings.

 

[whitetiger]

you can by an F series front mout mower with a climate controlled (as in heated and air conditioned

Once again, you and your tall tails,
The fact is Kubota does NOT offer AC in the cab on a F-series mower, they never have.

 

[Flogger]

I have only one machine that has an overheat problem and it is a Kubota diesel. Blowing out the radiator isn't an option. I have to soak it with a soap solution and wash it out every 15 to 20 hours to keep it cooling. Kubota radiators suck. With that said that is the only problem I have had with the machine.

 

[WinterDeere]

A belt drives the outer blades and they have greaseable ball bearings.

Wow... hard to explain how someone so familiar with their mower that they're modifying the spindle bearing seal arrangement to improve the design, could not realize the spindles were belt drive, versus drive shaft. Makes me wonder if he has ever even seen the mower he claims to own!

 

[Hay Dude]

Wow... hard to explain how someone so familiar with their mower that they're modifying the spindle bearing seal arrangement to improve the design, could not realize the spindles were belt drive, versus drive shaft. Makes me wonder if he has ever even seen the mower he claims to own!

Maybe he spends so much time in the “Kubota F-series factory AC cab” that he doesn’t know the outer spindles are belt driven?

 

[Dennis Mohn]

I have a Steiner 430, Kubota diesel. I got it as abandoned property , didn't run , wiring was messed up and the dynamo was shot. Got it running properly bought a blade for it and I'm told the value is around 15K . I went in to my local shop to pick up some belts this spring and asked the price of a comparable unit on the floor. $31K just for the tractor , no mower, no bucket , no blade . Just the tractor. A gas powered unit was $1000 less , so $30,000 just for the power unit. Go figure, I'll run mine until it quits and then rebuild it again. I did need to redo the mower deck and add teeth to the bucket but all in I have about $3k in this unit.

 

[WinterDeere]

Those little Steiner's are some stout machines. But they were produced in pretty low numbers, which of course means very high cost to manufacture.

My 3033r was somewhere in the $30k's base unit, and by the time I had it configured with added hydraulics, loader, bucket, plow, mid-PTO... it was somewhere in the mid-$40k's. That was in 2019, when the average car, produced in very substantially higher volume with no dealer customization or conversion required, was nearing $37k.

I have spent my career as a design engineer, perpetually having to predict cost on systems that haven't been designed yet, based sometimes on only the loosest concept of how the final product will be built. I learned from some who came before me, the phrase, "stuff costs money". Despite our products being very high tech custom electronics, the concept that they can be sold almost by the pound or cubic foot, has almost always held true. The same might hold for tractors or cars, produced in a given volume.

 

[Frxdy]

It looks like scam bait to me. It really does not look like a legit ad.

 

[OzarkChris]

Ok, so I've been pondering the OPs question and kept coming up with why anyone would spend $80k+ on a single use machine. I've come up with probably more questions than answers though. Anyway, here are my 4 cents (inflation )!

1. Unless you mow in extremely soft wet grass. Wouldn't it make more sense to spend $60-70k on a ~100hp cab with a $16k flexwing (JD FM4012), 144" (12')? You would have the ability to do other things too for just the cost of the implement!

2. When it comes to mowing grass, especially with the model in the OP post. Is there really that much difference in weight/in2 do to the size difference in wheel size?

3. Wouldn't a really wide ZT like that be just as bad as a tractor when it comes to avoiding obstacles e.g., trees, posts, etc?

I only ask these questions because I have no experience with ZTs - especially this size.

 

[jkahan]

You are going to like that zd1211. I have over 5000 hours across (3) zd mowers, and they are all great machines. My current "new" zd1211 has 1700 hours, problem free.

yes I love my ZD1211 -- got it back in 2017. I actually use it instead of my brushhog on very "lumpy" land -- have had a few minor issues (pulley wheel failures on mower deck) and a major PTO failure but these were all operator-caused matter -- stupid New England rocks. I actually have a bunch of Kubota equipment -- amazing quality.