We bought our first Cub Cadet tractor a couple of months ago and I soon started to have my doubts, now, I just dislike the thing and wish I'd never bought it. I certainly won't be buying another one. I guess they're "reliable" but ours has so many design flaws that reliability isn't a consideration at this point.
The tractor is a TOTL GTX2100 Power deck lift, power steering model. It has the 54" manufactured deck. We were looking for a very capable machine to mow our 4 acres of lawn. That's all this tractor was meant to do, no snow clearing, no garden tilling etc, just mowing.
Dislikes:
The first thing I noticed with this tractor, within the first couple hours of mowing, the hood emblem fell off, never to be found. I hoped that this was not an indication of the overall build quality of this unit. My hopes would be dashed over and over in the coming weeks however.
The second thing I noticed that after that first couple hours of mowing, the headlights were filled with dirt and dust. Upon inspection, I could easily see why and I could easily see the horribly cheap design of the headlights. The lenses just snap over the headlights, no seals to keep out dust and moisture and not only that but once I took the lenses off to clean out the headlights, I saw that the reflectors are some cheap kind of plastic thing that doesn't even fit properly. The headlight reflectors are ill-fitting and are often open to the back, into the engine compartment. In short, there are no headlight assemblies on this tractor, only cobbled together headlight parts...and poorly at that.
Next we discovered that after about 3 acres of mowing, the deck was so plugged up that the mower struggled even in a light to medium cut. The deck has been removed three times for cleaning and we've only cut the grass four times! The desk wash system is almost useless considering how badly this deck gets plugged up.
While using the pointless "Deck Wash System", it is handy to set the parking brake, as you have to sit there for five or ten minutes with the deck running wide open. Well, the parking brake lock began to jump off, releasing the brake with a BANG. Now, the brake won't stay engaged at all. This is very inconvenient with the myriad of idiot switches on this machine, you can't get off the tractor with the engine running unless the parking brake is locked. No parking brake lock means no getting off with the engine running.
So, we sit, very disappointed and about six thousand dollars poorer. This tractor isn't worth half that money, it has so many design flaws.