Kubota's kinda insane $27,000 zero turn mower

Neil from Messick's here today to show you kubota's new ZD 1611 Zero Turn Mower this 27 000 machine can certainly chew down a lot of grass we're going to talk to you a little bit today about why this thing is kind of on the expensive side some of the benefits of diesel Zero Turn Mowers and whether or not this machine is right for you [Music] I think for this video two items of context here are probably pretty important one of those things is my personal background with zero turn mowers I started with a 72 inch used mower that was some years old at right about 25 gas horsepower with a Kawasaki engine on the back I then moved into kubota's zd1511 their diesel 26 horsepower model was a wonderful machine to take care of my mowing chores but unfortunately burned up in a house fire and after that I moved on to a new machine from a company called Ferris that's equipped with a 40 horsepower EFI gas engine so I've kind of been through that spectrum of low horsepower gas mid horsepower Diesel and now High horsepower gas and one of the things that I can tell you about making that transition is that I ended up being extremely preferential towards diesel machine beans diesels in Zero Turn Mowers are quite uncommon but going through that transition and those machines I have found that the fuel economy of these diesel machines far outshines their gas counterparts and even though they are less horsepower that is more than made up by their torque the 26 horse diesel machine that I had nearly outperforms the 40 horsepower gas that I drive today while consuming less than a half of the fuel that goes through that gas machine so diesels are unusual their selling price makes them a kind of a turn off to a lot of people you don't see them on the back of many landscapers trailers but my opinion is they should be far more popular for those reasons the second thing that you should understand is exactly where this model sits in kubota's product line This is the largest and most powerful most feature Rich in Deluxe zero turn mower that Kubota offers so you're going to start start with the z200 series down at your homeowner end a Z400 it's kind of your prosumer model these 700 that's your commercial mower kind of aimed at a commercial landscape or space a zd10 series which are small frame diesel mowers very unusual in the marketplace to have a diesel engine in that small little frame mower a ZD 1200 series that's a large frame diesel Mower and then this at the very top end of the product line a zd1611 that is a large frame with a large High horsepower diesel engine offering now as we talk through the different features and construction of this machine one thing that you should understand is that Kubota builds all of this we sell five or six different lines of Zero Turn Mowers and that's extremely unusual in this space most zero turn companies are going out and buying Transmissions from Hydro Gear or parker they're buying engines from Kubota Yanmar or somebody else and they're not actually constructing most of the major components of their machine that is not the case with this this is a unique Kubota transmission bolted onto a Kubota Engine so they build this machine from front to back speaking from first-hand experience as a dealer of competitive product lines that is important we often can run into warranty issues and we have an engine on the back end of a zero turn mower that we actually aren't certified to service and that happens believe it or not it is very possible to have a dealership that is selling a zero turn mower that is not certified to do warranty service on the engine that's in the back end of that machine and we have sold some machines like that and run into cases where we have to ship a machine off to another dealer for service because we are not warranty certified on the engine one bit of confidence that you can have in a kubota-built machine is that all of these bits and pieces and Bobs that are in a machine like this can be serviced by the retailing dealer so we're going to make our way around the entire machine and talk about its features and construction but the first thing that really makes it different from the prior model the zd1511 if you've seen that before is that this is a new engine the zd1511 ran an engine that was a little problematic in kubota's product line it ran a unique emission system that was extremely small and compact but had some problems in cold weather now that engine really wasn't that big of an issue in this mower because you don't run your mower in the winter time they ran okay when they were hot but that engine has now been long discontinued as out of kubota's product line at this point and the ZD and the f-3990 were the last ones to be running it and those now are being replaced with new models so this now runs the same engine that's in the top end of kubota's LX Series in the 35 horse LX 3520 and the 40 horse LX 4020 it's also running here in this machine as well so this is a a new block a new implementation of a v1505 engine now what makes this different from the prior model is a new and updated emission system this one should not give us the mechanical issues that the old one did but this one is also significantly more fuel efficient somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 percent more or so I actually owned a tractor with that engine in it before and I was always surprised by how much fuel I was running through that machine they're giving a 20 percent number here to this but I would suspect it could actually be higher than that that other engine when it was tuned to work properly really burned an abnormal amount of fuel so this should be significantly more fuel efficient than what the older model diesel was and also vastly more efficient than a high horsepower gas engine the engine itself is a four horsepower model tuned to 31 horsepower you're gonna see here on the side it has a little baby turbocharger bolted onto it this is a very high displacement engine for the amount of horsepower that it's creating and with the addition of that turbo on there as well this should be an extremely torquey engine that torque is one of the biggest things that I noticed between going between the 26 horse diesel that I had and the 40 horse gas that I run today when I run into high grass with that gas engine the engine dogs very very quickly compared to what I was used to from the prior diesel that I was running before so that aspect of the mechanical differences between those engines compared combined with high displacement in a Turbocharger should make this thing a beast in Long Grass tuck the hole in the back of the engine compartment is a diesel particulate filter once you cross over 26 horsepower on a diesel engine you need to have one of these on the outside of your engine in order to collect the soot the soot will collect in this canister and then it will periodically need to go through a burn cycle you have a little gauge up on your dash that shows when that's going to be necessary I haven't run this machine yet to tell you exactly how often that's going to happen but I would guess it's in about the 30 to 40 hour range and when it happens you're simply going to continue working it's not something you need to stop or worry about or do a parked regen you just simply continue mowing you'll hear a tone change from the engine to maybe smell a little something is the Easy Bake Oven down here goes through its burnout cycle now you can avoid this complexity and save about six thousand dollars in cost in the zd-1211 and the next model down so the complexity here on this system and the turbocharger and the electronics involved and making all of this work is some of the most most expensive horsepower for your dollar that I often see in the tractor business so the other feature that you're getting for the six thousand dollar premium that you're paying for this model over the next one below it is an air ride seat down here between my legs I've got a little switch I can either let the air out of the air cushion down here below the seat or pump it right back up again and you just simply sit here and bounce yourself a little bit while you adjust this in order to adjust the amount of cushion that's in that air bladder you cannot underestimate the value that a good seat has on a zero turn mower these are by and large fairly rough riding machines right you're trying to mow 10 and 12 miles an hour over rough ground and in many cases you're doing it on a machine that's got a pretty rigid axle underneath of it now the bigger heavier machines like this do tend to ride better than the smaller lighter ones do but a lot of the Comfort on the Zero Turn is driven by this seat and this is one of the best seats that I've seen on a mower before not only is that air ride but it has a very plush cushion in it it's got cushioned arm rests that are adjustable it's an extremely comfortable seat we have had some people buy this seat out of the parts department and then install it onto the zd-12 series I wish Kubota would offer this as a factory option on the next series down because it is a bolt on fit it's very easy to put onto the smaller machines with a very small amount of creativity now when I said we sell five and six different lines of Zero Turn Mowers the one way that we've always differentiated the kubota's from the rest of those is in their transmission this is a unique Kubota transmission that is not sold by another company it's not a Parker it's not a hydro gear it is their own engineering now one of the things that is important to know is that this transmission exists in the other ZD models all of the Diesels share a version of this same technology inside of this Central gear case right here is a high hydraulic clutch so when you turn your mower deck on here this is not a magnet snapping together to turn a clutch on to engage your mower deck just like a bigger tractor they're using hydraulic plates in order to engage the deck it's a much more heavy duty engagement system you also have a drive shaft going down to the mower deck rather than belts it's going to be a cleaner transfer of power and is going to last longer than what a belt does right it's one less wear and maintenance item your wheel Motors and pumps are all bolted onto this assembly it's not hoses or belts that are going between the drive components everything is sealed up here on the inside because we have this hydraulic system running these clutch plates you also have a cylinder down here that's going to lift your mower deck so rather than a foot operated pedal or maybe an electric screw that's moving that deck up and down this uses a hydraulic cylinder in order to raise and lower the mower deck so the guts of this machine are much more tractor-like kind of like the Kubota is until right there attract their company fundamentally I see tractor technology down in here with a lot more heavy duty components than so many of the off-the-shelf pieces that you'll find from a lot of other companies now I'm a nuts and bolts guy right like I love seeing engineering and technology and that kind of stuff in this drivetrain the one downside the one negative to the construction of this machine is its weight if I compare it to the machine that I drive today this mower comes in at about 300 pounds heavier than what that mower does and that 300 pounds you can feel when you're driving this machine's not going to be quite as Snappy in the corners as what a lighter zero turn can be and you just think about all that extra inertia that you have when you're driving along in a 2100 pound a one ton Zero Turn Mower if you're going 10 miles an hour and you want to make a quick turn at the end of a pass you got a lot more weight to slow down and that an extra inertia does make the machine feel less Snappy in the corners than a lighter machine can so I love what's here but I would describe this thing as say a tank versus a Ferrari compared to some of those other designs of mowers that might be a little bit more lightweight a little bit more responsive when turning continue to work our way around the machine you're going to notice this has a rubber floor mat on it I like that because it's anti-slip but it also helps keep down the noise a little bit compared to having a resonating piece of metal if you need to service the mower or get into the middle of it in order to wash the deck out there's a service panel here in the front that very simply just opens up no screws or anything holding this down and there's rubber isolation pads in here to keep it from rattling but to get down to this Central gearbox here if you need to check the oil or Grease the spindle that's in the middle it's very easy to service and to get to working our way around the front here we have the two pedals that raise and lower the mower deck hydraulically like I pointed out before your parking brake and also a flip up cover here in the front that has a jack built into it every machine is going to have this as standard equipment you flip out a lever here and start turning and it's going to rotate your front axle to make it very easy and safe to get underneath the machine to change the blades so brief overview on the controls that are on the machine here on my right hand side I have a lever to engage my mower deck as we talked earlier that's done hydraulically not with a magnetic clutch I have a lever out here to raise and lower my engine RPMs my throttle a dial here to change the cutting height of my mower deck and then on my left hand side a little intelligent display this is going to have indicators on it like your park brake any kind of cautions fuel indicator whether your mower deck is on the information about that particular filter that's on the engine it shows you how plugged up it is to give you an idea when it's going to go in the regen and then a parked and inhibit button here if you need to operate those things by and large this is a system you're not going to worry about you're just going to go cut your grass but the diagnostic information for it or over here on the display so is this machine for you at a six thousand dollar price premium over the lower model odds are it's not right this is a pretty Niche model it's one it's not going to be a high volume unit probably is going to make sense mostly for people who are mowing you know six and eight hours a day where the performance of a little bit of extra horsepower means time that's saved which means dollars in your pocket over the long run if you're looking for that bleeding edge type machine ah this is it right in a lot of ways kubota's mowers here aren't the best that's out there in a lot of ways right this isn't the fastest machine this isn't the highest horsepower machine but for me it is ultimately the one that I chose to own for a while I love the combination of an affordable diesel engine of the technology and the engineering that goes into the transmission the longevity and the hours that we can get out of this platform it strikes the right balance of a lot of these features in a way that has made a lot of sense in the marketplace it is the most popular machine that's out there in a diesel zero turn mower with the largest percentage of market share and it's for those reasons it's not the best of anything in a lot of those ways but it's the perfect balance of all that stuff at the end of the day that's led to its success so if you're shopping for a piece of equipment we can help if you've got parts of service needs for a machine you've already got it's a column Essex we're available at 800-22-3373 or online at message.com [Music] thank you

Channel: Messick's Equipment

Views: 17,209

Keywords: Messicks, Kubota, new, holland, caseih, case, krone, farm, equipment, tractor, tractors, farming, farminglife, construction

Id: ZCoLUHK4XKg

Length: 16min 0sec (960 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 14 2023