Mower for 89-year old mother

[Dale_Alan]

Buy her a zero turn, women just love to run them. My wife would never,ever be caught dead on a mower, but when I got the Hustler she wanted to try it. Now I can't get her off it. To me one of life's greatest pleasures is mowing grass, nothing you do in life will give such instantaneous beautiful results. Just look behind you and see the results. I'm proud of her, sounds like a tough lady.
Dale

 

[mark02tj]

I was at a local Deere dealer a couple of weeks ago and saw a new rear-engine Snapper rider on the floor - very similar to the old Comet. I would look at getting her another one of those. With the "shift-on-the-fly" clutch disc system, she rarely needs to touch the pedals. It's easy to get on and off as she won't have to swing her leg over the seat like a tractor style mower. I know they make (made?) this rider in an electric start so she wouldn't have to pull start it. Yeah, the 30" will take longer to mow with than a larger deck, but it sounds like she enjoys the task.

I used to do mower repair in my younger days (late 70's, early 80's) and loved the simplicity of the old Snapper and Ariens rear engine riders. From time to time I still use my dad's old Ariens RM-828e to mow the acre or so around my house.

Someone suggested a zero-turn. You might want to take a look at Cub Cadet's new zero-turn that uses a steering wheel instead of handles. That might be a nice machine for her as well. I'm not sure what controls it uses to go forward or reverse though.

 

[tom4018]

They still make "entry level" HST riding mowers that have a hand lever for setting forward speed, same location as on 'geared' type riding mowers.

I'd also recommend looking into a pedal modification and/or a seat modification if the forward-most adjustment isn't close enough to ease the strain on her hip.

That would be something good to let her test drive. I think Craftsman mower still makes one like that, sure others do also.