I have owned 5 air cooled riding mowers from 12 Hp up to 22 Hp in different brands of mowers. I have always been a stickler for strict maintenance intervals. If the manual says change oil at 50 hours, I do it before 40 hours. Simply to stay ahead of moisture and carbon build up. In 2001 I purchased a 3208 Cub Cadet with an 18hp Liquid Cooled Kawasaki engine. I currently have 2,781 hours on it and have not touched any internal components and only recently installed a new fuel pum which is the same on air cooled engines. It is a remote mount. I change the oil and filter between 40-50 hours and use 10w30 Pennzoil year around. 100 - 105 in the summer and as low as -15 in the winter. I mow 2.5 acres and run a lawn sweeper as much as twice a week since I also water the entire two acres. Mowing in northern Delaware is typically from mid March through the end of November. I also have a 48" snow blower and clean my driveway and seven neighbors drive ways - just because they are my neighbors. I also clear curb to curb our street and culdasac - about four city blocks. I also have a cab, weights and chains to assist in traction. i say all of this because the LC Kawasaki at 18 hp is a direct shaft drive to the transaxle and you simply can not kill the engine by overloading. 6-8" of grass is not a problem. Nor is 30" of snow. It just goes and goes. The engine has yet to use ANY oil between changes. Unbelievable. The ONLY added maintenance that takes about 30 seconds after each mower is to remove the radiator screen and shake the accumulated grass off of it and slip it back into place. After, 16 years of great reliability, I will never buy an air cooled engine in a larger mower. The 3208 has a 54" mower deck. Two acres takes about 1.5 - 2 hours. I hope the long dissertation takes away any worry about owning the LC Kawasaki. It is worth the little extra and it will outlast anything air cooled 3-4 to 1 based on my experience. Orville White Middletown Delaware

He is weird and too up tight. He needs to suck it up, you lend you take a risk, period. Several years ago I was stuck at work during a snow storm and had to work long hours. My family could not shovel my house out. My neighbor took it upon himself and used his snowblower and did my entire driveway and walks. He accidently went between my curb and my car on the driveway and scraped my car along the side and left some red snapper snowblower paint. So I sucked it up. Would be ungreatful for me to rip him a new a_ _. Oh well, you win some you lose some. But in the big picture, it is better my family was not trapped and it is better to have neighbors like that versus selfish ones.

Don't think all joysticks are the same, have you tried any others, such as Country Clipper? They seem very easy to me, almost had me changing my thoughts of Scag being #1, but then . . . .

Petroleum products can be very difficult to remove from clothing but it can be done. First use the hottest water you can. Simple green is an effective degreaser, but tends to foam a bit, it may cause your machine to suds up and will require extra rinses. Or you could soak the clothes in a hot simple green solution in a bucket, rinse in hot water and then launder in hot water with some washing soda(sodium carbonate), or borax. You can also add STTP(sodium tripoly phosphate if you have it, if not then I wouldn't buy it just for this. Use hot rinses if your machine will allow it. If you normally use fabric softener then skip it, as it make it harder to remove petroleum odors because it coats the clothing fibers. Next run the clothes thru the dryer and repeat the process if needed. Drying in the dryer adds lots of heat which helps to boil off the volatile petroleum components which is what is giving off the odor. Simple green is a fairly gentle degreaser and it rinses well, but like all degreasers it is more powerful than normal detergents alone, thus make sure you rinse, rinse, rinse. A last resort could be dry cleaning, yes it will be kinda pricey to have a whole load of laundry dry cleaned but the solvents used by dry cleaners would definatly remove any petroleum compounds, and it would be cheaper than new clothes. For what it's worth I work in a machine shop and my clothes always get oily from machining oils etc, the washing soda alone removes the smell and any oil stains that might be present. Hope this helps.