I believe Howse just used a budget DS for this mower. It's pretty much a medium duty cutter. Certainly not the most beefy bush hog, but nowhere near the lightest duty cutter I've used either. In looking for DS's to replace it with the more expensive ($600/$700+) seem to be made in places like Italy, etc, and I'm sure a beefier than this DS. To be honest this is a 20 old cutter, or there abouts, and we've used it a pretty good bit, but I've never had to rebuild a joint in one either. While some DS's are asking high 3 or even 4 figure $, some are only $120-$200, but they all look identical to the point that I've pretty sure they are the same DS that comes off the same Chinese assembly like, but gets a different brand slapped on them. For example everyone's seen Vevor the past few years start selling pretty much everything from wrenches to air gun pumps, a fuel and siphoning pumps, to tractor implements, etc, etc. I found these Vevor DS's from Lowes that look identical to the one on our cutter. Everything from the castings on the yokes, to the bolt patterns, to the clutch, to the plastics down to the strength ribbing is identical. Gareenteed that these $120 Vevor brands DS's came off the tooling that produced the one on our Howse. Everything is too exact when looking at unmachined castings for them not to be. I also noticed that these DS's are having the bushings exposed like on mine, but just like a new tractor comes with the filters painted, these exposed areas on the bearings are also painted so they don't stand out.
This DS looks identical to mine:
Just to go on another little rant, many times these American companies that source parts from China want to slap their brand on them, and claim, "designed in USA, by American engineers, and made in China with foreign materials." Then they sell them to us for X amount with their brand on stamped on them, but the 3rd party Chinese manufacture will take the branding off the side of a part and sell the same thing on EBay for 1/4-1/3 the cost. I've seen this a lot with things like intercoolers, or oil/transmission coolers and things like this. Then these American companies claim that even though these parts look the same, it's just that other Chinese companies copied them exactly in the looks department, but internally they're not as good. BS, they are the exact same part, just withiut your brand logo and #'ing. I've had aftermarket intercooler companies claim I was wrong on this, and when I say them prove it. Buy a $200 EBay intercooler, and use one of your $700, Chinese made I/C's, saw both open, and compare them. I'm telling you they are the same part, made on the same assembly line. They refuse to take me up on that, but they claim their inner cores are better, and that justifies the 3.5x's the $ increase. I have no issue with American companies sourcing from China and asking whatever they want on the American market as long as they're honest about when compared to the Chinese sourced parts that skip the middle man, and sells directly from China for less $. That's what happens when you bight that fruit of using China to make your product to then sell for likely 5-6 X's profit for what you paid for them in bulk.
