Thanks to both of you. I'm beginning to suspect my deck is different. There don't seem to be any handles on it at all. What the book tells you to do is: "Put a 15mm closed wrench or a socket on the idler sheave nut (A) and rotate clockwise to move idler sheave toward front of tractor and hold to release belt tension." I tried that, but it doesn't give nearly enough tension release. I'm begining to wonder... I bought the new belt from Alexander & Duncan in Leominster UK, and while I was at it I bought a second one as a spare. The second one has "John Deere" on its outside face, but the first doesn't, and it's the first one that I mounted. Both these belts came in an identical thin card sleeve, but they weren't coiled quite the same way. I'm wondering if someone "made a mistake" and put a non-original belt in a John Deere sleeve. But be that as it may, is it possible that your 48" deck and mine aren't the same? I bought the whole thing less than a year ago, so maybe they changed the pattern. Passthegravey: does your manual talk about slipping a wrench over the left-hand idler sheave nut?

Hmmm, I see your quandary and feel your pain on this one. Let's see, subtracting 25% of .65 acres leaves .4875 or a half acre to be mowed. The "classic" wisdom used to be that you didn't need a rider until you were mowing over half to three quarters of an acre. a 30% grade will require a strong trans, and you've already discovered you're going to have to upgrade tires as the turf tires they come with are useless on grades. Another consideration is that the lower end units probably aren't going to have the best brakes and if a belt breaks going up or down..... It almost seems that you're going to be forced into buying a much stronger and bigger unit than you need. I've known folks who had similar situations who used a self propelled walk behind while wearing golf shoes (pegs) and it seemed to work OK, not that I paid a lot of attention. I have no personal experience with self propelled walk behinds as to their traction ability. Since they have solid tires you could easily add the screw in studs which are becoming more and more popular. Save a ton of money and get a good cardio workout every time you cut the grass!! Unfortunately one of those won't pull a garden cart or an aerator. I think if I were you, I'd be looking around for a used GT, personally I have a strong preference for the Craftsman 6 speeds, but there's a ton of folks who swear by the hydros on slopes as well. I like the manual trans as I'm comfortable taking it apart if need be, but that's just me. If you bit the bullet and drop $2500-3000, you'll probably get at least a 50" deck and have your mowing done in about ten minutes...:-). That leaves $3000 sitting in the shed 99% of the time. Not a wise allocation of resources. I think I'd be looking into a used machine, save more than half the up front cost, and if you're careful and test it out well before purchase it should hold up. Again, beating the "manual trans" drum, I'd be more comfortable buying a used manual than a hydro. Keep us informed, Good luck, Ev

I bought my DLT3000 in 2003, and am very happyn with it. At the time, I checked out all the tractors priced at the $1,500-2,000 range, and found them about equal in quality. In fact, this was the time that Home Depot went from Scotts to JD. I checked the the JD, and found they were actually higher priced because of their name, though the quality was about the same. I chose Sears because I liked their customer service and repair. Well, in the 9 years since, Sears has gone to complete hell. It appeared after the Kmart merger, that the customer service had gone downhill fast. So today, as I do every year, I check out the tractors in all the stores. The price range still offers the similar quality amongst all the brands. And JD has gotten more competatively priced by lowering theirs. So today, if I were to by one, It would probably be a JD, Husq, or CC. I wouldn't rule Sears out, but I have soured on them. If I went to the next level at $2,000-3,000, then Sears is not even in the picture.

I have a L130 - similar - same front axle. My axle (mowing 2 acres country plot, snow blowing with 48" blower) has snapped 2 times. I tried nickle rods to weld it first time, but at about 50 bucks it was too much work to do and did not hold. I just ordered the 2nd axle, but will probably make my own axle soon from square tube steel. Should not be too hard to do, and probably will cut off the spindles and weld them into the tube. The rest is just drilling. Might line the pivot hole with another steel tube too. Anyway, the cast iron used is pretty close to pot metal, and is about as cheap as it comes. I think Deere only makes the axle and the dealers actually claim their Cast Iron axles are stronger than average lawn tractors. Ha ha ha. My old Sears and Murray had tube steel axles which never had a problem in years of use at the same property. I wont bother talking about eh TuffTorq tranny - another too little and too light thing deere did to make more money on this tractor. This shows what kind of management Deere has, and personally I would never buy another deere. I sure dont want to put 10,000$ into a green lawn mower just because its supposed to be good. For 10k$ I could have a machine shop make me one that is actually good. Sorry about my rant, but this lawn tractor has to go.