Review of the Craftsman Professional 28" Wide Deck Mower

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superkaz661
Posts: 26
Joined: August 8th, 2016, 2:01 pm
Location: Metro Wash DC
Grass Type: Tall Fescue
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Review of the Craftsman Professional 28" Wide Deck Mower

Post by superkaz661 » July 26th, 2017, 4:10 pm

Review of the Craftsman Professional 28" Lawn Mower (Long)

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I recently purchased, and returned, the Craftsman Professional 28" Lawn mower. I havent seen many detailed reviews of this machine, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on what I liked, what I didnt, and why it ultimately ended up going back.

In order to share my thoughts on the Craftsman Professional 28" ("Pro"), its useful to understand my lawn, and my current mower.

The lawn

I live in the mid-atlantic zone 7, and my lawn is 13k sq ft of northern nix, mostly tall fescue, mixed with a little kbg in the back. I'd rate my turf quality and density as fairly good--its one of the best in the neighborhood, though it won't stack up against many on here. The terrain is 60% flat-ish, with the remaining 40% having grades of 5%-15%. I also have a number of garden beds surrounded by lawn on both the flat and the slopes.

Current Mower

My current mower is a 6 year old nicely optioned consumer craftsman, with a 22" cutting deck, and a Briggs and Stratton 700 series (190cc, 7.0 gross torque rated) motor. This mower is a good performer. I mow high, at between 3.5 and 4 inches at all times of the year, and at that height and all lower heights, the mower has a fairly high cut quality (I'd give it a 7.5 out of 10 for cut quality). My subjective 7.5 out of 10 on cut quality is for mulching at the highest setting, and quality improves slightly as you drop the deck. I use it in mulching mode (90% of my use) and bagging (the other 10%). It'll leave an occasional straggler, but I know very few consumer mowers that don't. It also stripes surprisingly well, as I added fill to the hollow rear apron, which combs the grass on each pass.

Despite having all the bells and whistles, including electric start, which makes the machine heavier as it carries the starter and battery, the machine is fairly nimble, even though its specs list the weight at 110 lbs. Turns are easy, and the weighted skirt does not affect mowing in reverse. That is, the mower will not present any problems if I decide to mow on a pull pass.

Under self-propel, the machine, when new, ran at I would guess 4-4.5 mph, though that is only a guess. It has slowed a touch over time as I've not yet replaced the drive belt, and Im guessing it has stretched. Although Ive adjusted the drive cable, It doesnt impress me as being as fast as it was when new.

Reason for Purchasing the Pro

Although I greatly enjoy taking care of the lawn, it takes me about 43 minutes to mow (excluding edging or trimming) the entirety of the lawn. With two young kids at home, I need to be efficient wherever I can. 10 minutes is meaningful in my world. Its an extra job done, or one more game of catch (I use that term loosely when the game is with a 3 year old).

One of the primary draws of the Pro is the wider deck. At 28", the Pro is 27% wider than my current mower. Conceivably, if I mowed the same square footage as my current mower in a single swath, I could expect to cut my mowing time down by a quarter. Factor in fewer turns (dead time not spent cutting) the savings could be even more.

This mower seems to be clearly placed to take a bite out of the wide deck mower segment currently inhabited by the Toro TimeMaster. True to the name, the biggest selling point of a wide-deck mower is the quicker mowing times.

In addition to the reduced cut time, the Pro promised a high quality cut, and offered a number of nice features, including a compact storage mode, a single lever height adjustment (though some may consider that a con if they prefer to cant their decks), and a blade brake clutch. It also comes with a striping attachment and a beefy 223cc 9.5 gross torque rated B&S motor that I suspect is the same motor on the new TimeMaster, even though the TimeMaster bills its gross torque at 10. It does not however come with a bag. You must purchase it separately for about $200 if you want one. Since nothing is wrong with my current mower, I planned to keep that as well and use that for bagging whenever the need arised, so I didnt care about not having the bag come with.

Essentially, the Pro seemed like a worthy competitor spec-wise to the TimeMaster. With several Sears coupons available to me, I was able to get the Pro out the door for just shy of $700, including tax.

Evaluation

I cut my lawn twice over the 30 days that I had before I had to make a choice as to whether to keep it. Now, it is summer, so the grass isnt pushing its thickest, but I did have an opportunity to mow when a bit wet on one of the cuts, so I do feel somewhat able to judge on that front.

What I liked

The build quality

Although I can't judge on a long-term basis, the build quality seemed to be high. The deck, the wheels, everything seemed solid and like they would last. My only niggle, and its a tiny thing, is that it looked like the paint was a touch thin in one spot. When thats the worst that you notice, things are pretty good.

The motor

The 223cc Briggs is a champ. I don't think Ive ever had an easier time cold-starting a mower. A 5 year old could do it. The recoil starter is incredibly light, and from first attempt out of the box, it was a one pull start. Hot starts were a little more touchy, sometimes taking 4 pulls to get it going, but with a blade brake, I dont see why a consumer would stop the engine before finishing the yard. Additionally, even though I only cut once with moderately wet grass, the motor didnt even think of slowing down. I expect that unless you are cutting the tallest and wettest of grass, the motor will do the job. I really liked it.

The cut quality

I would subjectively judge the cut quality to be a little better than my current mower, which I already thought was good. Out of the box, the mower is set up for mulching. At the highest deck setting that the Pro offered (3.75") the cut was quite good. There was significant blade height uniformity, and not a trace of mulched clippings. I did not test at a lower setting. I wish the deck could go a little higher, but its only .25 less than my usual highest setting, so I could convince myself to be happy here. The mower did leave a few stragglers from time to time, but no more than my current mower, and perhaps a few less. When running the mower with the blades engaged, the vacuum the deck and blades cause is immediately noticeable. You can both hear and feel the air movement, even in the operators position.

The handle storage

It may seem like a small thing, but the ability to store the handle in the 90* upright position, or fold it over completely makes storage in my space limited shed much easier. Its a big machine, but its floor footprint is less than my current mower. Additionally, folding the handle only takes the press of a single lever, which makes it very simple and efficient.

What I didn't like

The drive system

As I mentioned earlier, it seems that the Pro is a direct market competitor to the Toro TimeMaster. As such, I expect that Craftsman's engineers decided that they needed to compete with the personal pace system that Toro has. So, instead of having a drive bar that pushes down the handle a la the Toro, the Pro has a drive lever that rocks forward as you push/walk.

IMHO, this is the worst feature of the machine. If you had a lawn that was flat, or at least a consistent grade, with minimal bumps, this system might work fine. And in fact on test pushes around my driveway, it was great. But it was just too touchy in practice around my lawn. When I would do trim passes around the garden beds, particularly when there was a change in both slope and curve, the machine was not controllable. At least not such that I was comfortable with it. It would buck and take off on you at the wrong times. This takes a toll on the user, and I expect on the long term survival of the transmission. My current mower's drive system is controlled by pulling on a paddle with either of your hands. It is miles superior in operation to the floating lever system on the Pro.

The Pro's system can be used to a little better effect if I placed my hands at the outer edges of the handle, and essentially pinned my thumb/wrist in between the stationary handle and the drive handle to achieve a consistent throttle, but this was a bit awkward and uncomfortable. I saw a youtube reviewer suggest that you can place one hand on the stationary handle and one on the drive lever, but I believed this this felt awkward as well, as you essentially have one hand high and one low.

I believe that there are many situations in which a user can and should adapt to a particular setup. That is, I didn't expect that I would begin using the Pro in exactly the same way as I have used previous mowers and got frustrated that it wasn't the same. I believe that my frustrations are the result of a design issue as a result of Craftsman trying to match Toro.

Maneuverability

The Pro's handles are long. Really long. So what? Because the Pro gets its wide cut by using a side by side (well, its actually an offset side by side so that the blades dont have to be indexed), the blades are about a mile in front of the operator. So much so that it required me to do 3 trim passes so that when I did my long cuts I wasnt stepping into the garden beds when I had to do a turn-around. Further, the extra long handle means that when you do make a turn-around, you have to do a significantly longer walking pivot to turn the machine 180*. In a natural walk, I counted 8 steps to do a pivot, and Im not a small guy. My current mower takes 4-5. This translates to extra time spent not cutting.

Its also a little slower than my current machine. I didnt race them side by side, but it felt like the Pros top speed was about 3.5-4 mph. Since the primary selling point is a wider deck to cut the lawn faster, I timed myself on the two full cuts to see the effect. Remember, I can mow with my current mower in 43 minutes. The average of the two cuts with the Pro? 38 minutes. A total saving of 5 minutes per cut. Now its possible that with continued use I could have gotten more efficient, but I dont think substantially. Maybe I could shave off a minute or two.

Striping kit

At the highest deck setting, the striper is remarkably ineffective. I believe this is because of how it is engineered. The striper acts by spring torsion pressing down on a lever arm to which the rollers are attached. That lever arm is a fixed length. As such, as you increase deck height, the torsion decreases. In fact, at the highest deck height, the roller arm is approaching 60*. In designing the mower for all grass types and cut height preferences, the torsion (which translates to the force with which the roller presses) may be sufficient to stripe for those who prefer to mow at lower deck heights. At the highest deck height, it just isn't. So much so that my current mower's janky apron striper gives me more defined lines. Additionally, the striper presents a problem when you are trying to pull the mower backward. Because the striper arm is approaching 60*, it wants to catch the ground and be pulled under the deck when you back up. This can be alleviated by popping the front wheels in the air when you pull backward. However, when you do so, you raise the deck off the ground and arent cutting. Not efficient as this is lost cutting time. I believe that simply lengthening the lever arm could cure both of these issues. However, doing so may make the roller a trip hazard.

Blades

This may be a trivial complaint, but out of the box, both blades had a least a 16th of vertical profile on the front of the blade. I dont expect that the blades will be razor sharp out of the box, but come on. This is a manufacturing miss, but dont know if it was just mine or if they all come this way. I spent at least 20 minutes putting a good edge on them by hand. Otherwise, the blades were unremarkable.

Conlusion

I really really wanted to like this mower. And in some respects I did. The cut quality and motor were terrific. But in the end, I think it was let down by the drive system, and some other features that could have been designed around. In fact, I even considered transplanting the drive handle from my current mower over (after all, all the controls do is pull a cable) but decided that with the other issues, it wasnt worth it.
Now, others with a flatter and lower cut lawn with fewer beds and obstacles may love this mower. But for me, considering my relative happiness with my current mower, the upgrade just wasn't worth it.

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