Why Cub Cadet Mowers Suck VS John Deere

welcome to mower mike's garage today i'm gonna do a video that's gonna be a little different this is not gonna be your regular go happy lucky goofy doofy mower mic nude flips and all that stuff no this could be the upset fed up cynical mower mic talking trash about a major american manufacturing company talk to the cub cadet lawnmower riding tractor building company ltd because i'm fed up folks i've rebuilt cub cadets for the last 10 15 years and i've wanted to love them i mean they're cool they got the cool name cub cadet they're yellow but i just this last one this ltx 1050 just pushed me over the top and i'm fed up i've rebuilt probably 30 of these similar lawn mowers 1040s 1042s 1050s 1052s 55s they've all got the same design flaws in them that i'm going to show you how to fix now remember i've got probably 20 or 30 videos on how to fix these cub cadet lawn mowers i've got millions of people watching me how to fix it so today i'm going to give you my opinion on the design of these lawn mowers and this is specifically from a point of view of how to fix these lawn mowers we're not going to talk about how to cut how they work but specifically when you've got to work on them what's going to piss you off and just to prove my point i'm going to compare the design of specific items on this cup cadet to this john deere this john deere is a john deere l120 48 inch with the briggs these are the two most popular lawnmower brands in america and they have very different designs and specific areas which is actually fairly surprising so strap it and hopefully i piss off some of you cupcake people when you stir the pot a little bit leave me some comments but uh let's dig underneath the hood and talk about my uh pet peeve number one all right we're going to start underneath the the hood of the lawn mower we're going to talk about the engines now first of all the engines on these lawn mowers they're all the same either you're going to have yourself a brakes and stratton or a kohler on the higher end models or maybe a kawasaki throughout all your models whether they're cub cadet john deere turo snapper but what is key is everything that wraps around the engine what gives you access to the engine now if you're going to work on your engine most likely you got a carburetor problem and we have a carburetor problem in order to get to the carb the first step is to remove the engine cover so let's look at this john deere all you do is you unbolt a few bolts on there and just lift her dress right off easy greasy did that one for you mark and then you got your carburetor right here now let's go over here to your cup cadet undid all the bolts what in the world look at that look at that there is no way to remove this engine cover without removing this gigantic fuel tank right here it is so so freaking annoying now i have tried to squeeze it out here and i've broken the engine covers so please do not try to wedge this thing out there is no reason for this fuel tank to be right here specifically to have this wedge right here for your little extra quarter of a gallon because it restricts access to your engine that drives me crazy and to remove this fuel tank which you have to do in order just to pull this engine cover off it's got this squirrely wire thing here as soon as you undo it it goes bing and it never comes back to the same shape and you've got these little eight millimeter bolts buried way underneath here with spiders and it's a complete pain in the butt i've got a whole video with thousands of views on it just to remove the gas tank now you're like all right where's the gas tank on the giant deer well it's underneath the seat like where a gas tank should be i mean having a gas tank sitting on top of a dual horse cylinder color 22 horse motor i don't know man just something doesn't seem safe about that so this is a huge pet peeve of mine is actually getting access on these cubby deer cub cadets to underneath the engine cover look at that please don't don't manhandle it don't force it because it will not go well so that's number one next let's look at the decks all right now we're at the reason number two why i am talking trash about these cub cadets as you see my jaw deer hats are getting bolder as we go through this video it's the quality of the deck metal itself these decks are fairly light sheet metal and the way they're built for whatever reason these cup cadets around where the the spindles bolt to the deck and the spindle is what holds the what spins the blade underneath and runs off this belt when it puts stress on these spindles here the actual deck itself starts breaking bending and i'm gonna go ahead and zero in and give you guys a better look this here is a 50 inch cub cadet deck i actually cut the front off for a different deck that's a whole different different story but let me zoom in and show you the aftermath of how these pieces of junk hold up all right so we're going to give you a close-up view of this cub cadet deck this here's the spindle i've got it unbolted and pulled off and oh my gosh does that not look absolutely horrible the way this works is these spindles are held on by bolts right here and as they uh they go over time this metal is so weak it just eventually works out and it breaks the the metal and the way they're bolted in here cupcake actually tried to bend down the metal right here but it's such crappy metal in this bolt scheme it just sucks it is so bad that aftermarket they actually build these rings where you come through and you can reinforce the deck specific for cup cadets these rings just fit cub cadets and i've got a whole different video on it i'll link below on on me uh putting one of these reinforcement rings on here but really there should be no reason for this uh this is the only brand lawnmower i've actually seen this where it's prevalent if you look over here at the john deere deck you see this is an old john deere i mean this thing's probably got 700 hours on it they can see around there there's no issue i think the reason is is because you can see on the john deere it's a much smaller hole than the cub cadet the cup cadet hole comes out here and i think it just is a crappy design all right so that's my reason number two now let's uh let's get underneath her and talk about reason number three i dislike these things all right so next we're going to talk about steering now 90 of the time when you've got a steering issue on your lawn tractor what is it it's your pinion gear this is the gear that goes on the end of your steering shaft this gear turns as you turn the steering wheel which turns the sector gear which turns the drag braces which turns the wheels now this is your john deere replacement pinion gear this is your cub cadet look at that i mean look at that little wussy thing compared to your john deere it's amazing how different these are so naturally there are some more steering pinion gear stripping out issues on your cub cadet but also on the cub cadet which i'll show you the steering shaft goes through this little tiny washer all the pressure from that steering shaft goes through here and then it hits that that pinion gear and this little thing here goes bad all the time so we're gonna get underneath these lawn mowers i'm gonna show you the difference between the two and uh give you a little more detail on another one of my pet peeves on the old cup cadets all right so we are underneath the john deere and i just want to show you how simple it is on the john deere to fix this little pinion gear just real quick right here is your pinion gear as you see it turns the sector gear which turns the drag links turns the wheels and your steering shaft is it goes right through the middle of it so replacing the john deere all you gotta do is rip off this nut here there you go you usually have to give up a little prime a little oh somebody pre-loaded her she slides off oh my gosh this may actually work you take your new one you slide it on there you try to make sure the wheels have not changed since you last lined her up line her up come on baby come on this is for tv there we go there we go line up between the holes then you give it a little little love tap boom boom get your nut back on there and voila and i'm telling you right now that is how easy it is because that's time this gets stripped out now there is a a um what you call a bushing underneath here that keeps that steering the steering shaft steady in here and i've never seen where that wears out all the time it's just this pinion gear wears out so you can see on the john deere it's real simple now as a bonus something i just noticed i've never been underneath this john deere for all you mower freaks look at this thing somebody before me installed a electronic fuel pump i've never seen that on here because there is actually a vacuum operated fuel pump on the engine but somebody thought they had a redneck engineer an electronic fuel pump underneath this 100 riding lawnmower so very interesting so all right so that's how easy it is on a john deere very simple system with uh you can see the drag links on the john deere are actually pretty beefy so let's get up underneath the cup cadet and see the difference all right now we've got to look underneath the cub cadet and i'm going to show you the failure point on these steering systems now the basic setup is the same on all these ride lawn mowers you got your pinion gear your sector gear hits the drag braces then uh moves the wheels but on this one you can see right here we got the smaller pinion gear so let me go ahead and rip that sucker off real quick it comes off just as easy a little air power always does it right and on this one here we'll go ahead and take that off there's this little washer here but what you'll notice here it already flopped out on me we'll zoom in as you see that right here so this here is not built in to the metal it's actually pressed in there and what happens is as you get pressure on that steering shaft it eventually wears out this metal around here and it wears out that little uh bushing as you can see right here i can just pop it out and that's that's what wears out that was that piece i showed you earlier it's just a crappy design i don't really appreciate it's a major fail point in order to replace that properly you have to take off this whole plate situation you've got to take off the sector gear and it's just a mess and also on cub cadets replacing the drive belt there's a lot more stuff above it that makes it harder to replace this whole situation here is going to come out it's got all these guide pulleys and whatnot so all i'm saying is that the john deere's and other mowers are easier to work on and they have less failed points on the steering all right i think i'm tired of bitching about cutting all right this is my last pet peeve on these cub cadets i swear this is the last one we are up underneath the lawnmower got a great shot hopefully my audio is a little better got me a new fancy uh lapel microphone now this is your pto that's your part time off when you pull the switch on the dashboard there there's a clutch in here that starts spinning and that's what makes your blade belt spin but while it is not spinning it needs some sort of support or else it'll just start spinning and wobbling around and that's what this little bar is now in these cub cadets this is the flimsiest situation ever seen it's this bar that bolts from the outside comes down then you've got your little notch right here comes across and then it bolts up through the frame and what happens is this bolt up through the frame is held on by this little welded nut and eventually you get a lot of pressure in here and that thing gets loose and then you hear this wobble wobble eventually it pulls off it'll turn this whole thing it'll strip out your electrical connection so let's look at this bolt this is your weak part right here if you look on top of the lawnmower all right so we are on the side of the lawn mower so you'll see right here this is where the bolt goes up through the underneath but look where it bolts on top it's got this little flimsy nut that strips out but also look at what it hits like if you put a longer screw in there you're going to hit your oil filter and it's just a ridiculous design i should have done something much much better so what i'm gonna have to do i'm gonna have to drill that thing out and then i'm gonna replace it with a larger bolt and if that doesn't work uh we'll have to go to plan b so this is my last pet peeve i swear we'll sum this thing up so hang on with me all right folks that summarizes what i hate about cub cadets and working on cub cadets i swear after every time i'm done going through one of these things i feel like i'm in a fight i got tools everywhere i'm dirty i'm sweaty i've been cursing usually start drinking it just there's just some things about coconuts that just i'm just tired of working on them there's some stupid design flaws in them just pisses me off if you need to do anything on your cup cadet i've got every video up there this would be like number 23 cubby that fix it video so i just want to lay that out there now if you love or hate cub cadets please leave me a comment now personally do i hate cub cadets i want to hate cub cadets but with that name cup cadet i just want to hate him but i can't you know just this week while i'm putting together this video of haiti cub cadets i come across this what is this this is the ultimate cubby cadet this is the gt2 2544 it's a year 2000 model about 20 years old and what it is this sucker is one of the very few shaft driven riding lawn mowers and check this out once i did this i was like oh i got to have it look at that it's got a hood that opens from the front and what do we got underneath it underneath here ladies and gents we've got ourselves a real deal what is that that's a color vertical motor look at that it's a vertical motor so it can run the uh the drive shaft all the way to the back how cool is that thing no the kid i want to hate them but then you find something cool like that and i don't know man maybe i'm gonna maybe i just a love hate relationship with the old cub cadets so this thing i'll be going through it but this is the boss hog of cub cadets again i hope you found this entertaining i sure had fun making it i'm gonna go ahead and put this thing back together sell it to some smoke down in the city so that mower mic out and stick around for next week

Channel: Mower Mike

Views: 151,336

Keywords: Cub cadet review, Review, Problems, Issues, Maintenance

Id: GrlvImWzqWs

Length: 14min 51sec (891 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 31 2022