Fivestring,
I suspect that both mowers I bought at WallyWorld were MTD's. If I decide to wade through the grass that has grown several inches since last Saturday when I cut it, braving the crappy drizzle that's coming down, I'll go to my shed and check. Both were cheap 21" mowers, but last year when it was decided that I couldn't get a riding mower, I splurged on the next model from the bottom. It had high wheels in the back and since I have some hills and bumps to deal with I thought that might make maneuvering easier. I didn't really get a chance to find out because I almost immediately hit a stump hidden in tall grass and bent the shaft. In my next life, I plan to learn about small gas engines, but in this life I was at least able to swap the engine from the old mower to the new body. The old mower was still working OK, but in using it as a brush hog, I had managed to catch the gas tank on so many bushes and such that the main bolt holding it on had fallen off. Not having one of that size in my collection, I basically tied the tank-carb piece to the motor with wire. So, when I switched the motor to the new body, I swapped the tank-carb stuff from the old to the new. The only problem then was that the shaft length was different, so that my Frankenstein mower didn't cut as well as it might. Then one of the guys at work gave me an old Companion (Sears) push mower because he had gotten a new self-propelled. After emptying the water from the gas tank and cleaning it up a bit, it works fine. Now if it doesn't just rust completely to pieces, it should serve to do the trim work I can't do with the riding mower my CFO promises me I can get this year. I have a long ditch to do, too, and I suspect I will be unable to overcome the pucker factor to do that with the riding mower.
The idea of a used mower is probably good, if you can deal with the mysteries of the engines. To me they're black boxes with very few pieces I can swap out in case of problems.
Chuck
