Mowing Which is better for mowing on hills, ZTR or SCUT?

[Charlesaf3]

ouch, I haven't had enough coffee for word problems but that sounds like roughly 30 acres per tank. That'd be at least 2 months of mowing for me, and doesn't justify diesel unless the difference is really cheap.

 

[Dargo]

How fuel efficient are the gas ones? I've already got a diesel fueling setup (oh, I'm dying to insert pictures here ) so the main advantage of going diesel would be not messing around with fueling. But if a tank of gas will last 10 acres, then its really not a big deal either way - picking up a tank of gas a month I can handle.

At one point I had two Grasshoppers, both 28 hp with 61" decks and 8 gallon fuel tanks. The only difference was that one was gas and the other had a Kubota diesel. The gas unit would run out of gas each time before finishing our roughly 10 acre lawn. The diesel can mow it all twice and still have about 1/8th of a tank of fuel left.

A good friend of my dad has a similar sized lot but with a lot more hills. I let him borrow the gas Grasshopper (called Gashopper by us ) once and I never got it back. He liked it so well on his hills that he bought it from me. I told him that it was a gas hog compared to the identical diesel unit I had and that I wish I hadn't bought the gas model. He's one who has never had anything diesel and wanted gas no matter what. Needless to say, we struck a fair deal for both of us and I bought another matching Grasshopper for our house. Now you know the story of me having 'matching' his and hers Grasshopper mowers at our house.

The gas Grasshopper had a 3 cylinder Kubota gas engine and I'd say that it was, by far, the smoothest gas engine I've ever run on a mower. Still, it drank the gas. Otherwise, I have no doubt at all that it will last thousands of hours. I'm happy and the guy who bought the Gashopper is thrilled with it still after almost 3 years. I guess you call that a 'win-win' deal.

 

[Charlesaf3]

Thanks. Clearly I'd prefer diesel. But it'd be tough to justify an uptick bigger than 1k or so.

 

[Diamondpilot]

Thanks. Clearly I'd prefer diesel. But it'd be tough to justify an uptick bigger than 1k or so.

Try about 3K. At least on the Farris going to the 28HP Cat Diesel over the 37HP Gas Kawasaki.

Chris

 

[Charlesaf3]

yeah, that wouldn't be worth it.

 

[Ken45101]

From a strict cost standpoint, yeah, the diesel is hard to justify. But OTOH, you don't have to worry about carb problems, etc. For a unit that sits unused for 4-6 months a year, diesels sure seem to have less problems than gas engines.

Ken

 

[Steve C]

So then SCUT is the answer to the question then?
Need both! SCUT and ZTR!!!

 

[Charlesaf3]

well, of course you need a tractor too! But I've got that covered. I think (and my wife REALLY thinks) that 2 tractors for one man not on a farm is sufficient.

I prefer diesel, no doubt. And would pay more for it. But not crazy amounts more, the usual reasons for diesel (torque etc) don't seem as strong

 

[SpringHollow]

what is the price of the ZTR's you are looking at?

Ken

 

[Charlesaf3]

not looking per se yet - just learning what I need to learn. I don't think I know enough to look yet, though this thread has been excellent.

I probably won't buy one for months. But I'll make a much better decision when I do. My initial take would be to buy a Kubota, since I've had such good luck with the brand. But in many tools, I've found that just because a company makes a good X, it doesn't mean there isn't another company that makes a good Y.

I'd never even heard of grasshopper, and yet it sounds like the best fit so far. But I still don't know what I don't know, and hate unknown unknowns.