I used the neighbor's ZTR mower last night to cut the worst parts of my lawn while waiting for a new axle (arriving Friday). It's a Troy-Bilt, one of their smaller models, no doubt built by MTD.
It only took about 15 minutes to get relatively proficient at driving it, but I gotta say, I'm not that impressed.
Maybe it's just not maintained properly but it did a lousy job of cutting, very uneven. And the ZTR is overrated too; on a mower that light, when I tried to turn the slower wheel just tended to skid and the mower wanted to go straight forward. And you can't really turn around bushes and such that tight anyway with the rear wheel as wide as the mower deck, because as you come around keeping the mower deck in close to the bush, the rear wheel runs over the bush. I caused some damage until I realized that the advertising is lies and you still really need to back up and take multiple passes.
I guess if I cleared the grass back from all my plants and mulched, then I could just zoom around them, but honestly, I can do that with my conventional tractor on the plants that I've cleared and mulched anyway.
I might buy a ZTR if I was shopping for a new mower right now, but then again, I might not. They're not the slam dunk that I thought they were.
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