First Post - Cub Cadet 3206

[carhopper]

Hi guys, this is my first post and my first cub. I have had a John Deere zero turn for about 5 years and a Huffy before that. I live on 2 acres of rough hilly terrain so the zero turn can be a bit squirrelly on the hills. I do enjoy mowing the lawn with it, but I'm afraid to let my son or wife on the zero turn. I also had an 89 Wheelhorse 310-8 without a mower deck. I just used this to pull a 900lb jet ski down to the lake in the back yard. It does a pretty good job but takes a lot of weight and sometimes some extra pushing to get it out of the lake. The wheelhorse only has one wheel of traction in the rear and I desperately needed dual, hence the 3206.

I started looking for a heavy duty tractor capable of pulling such a trailer. I was eyeing the John Deere X500 for a while but couldn't find a used one locally and the remote ones were very expensive any way. Since it's the end of the jet ski season, I decided to sell the wheelhorse and the JD to have money to buy something else. I sold the wheelhorse and then traded the cash plus the Z425 to a dealer for a 3206.

It's a very nice tractor with power steering, differential lock, and nearly $1,000lbs with the mower deck and filled rear wheels. It jerks that jet ski up much easier when I engage the diff lock. It needed quite a bit of TLC as I've been working on it all weekend. I sent it back to the dealer immediately because apparently the fuel pump failed and\or the float valve was sticking. They cleaned the carb and replaced the fuel pump and now it runs great.

I spent a few hours leveling and adjusting the mower deck first, then I tightened up all of the loose bolts that I found. The brakes needed to be adjusted, and the brake safety switch wasn't fully engaging with the parking brake on, so I bent the bracket in just slightly since I didn't see an adjustment for that. Now everything works like a charm.

There are just a few other things that bug me. One is the deck stop adjustment. I can't get the thing to budge. I suppose with a properly adjusted mower deck and rollers you don't need it anyway. I figure if I lock the deck at some level, the deck won't float any more. The 2nd is the forward control speed. I think it needs to be adjusted because I have to press hard on the pedal to get it to go faster that a moderate pressure. I got the manual from the manufacturer web site so I'll dig into those next weekend.