A commercial model would be the way to go. The big difference from a residential model to a commercial model is about 1500 to 2000 hours of service. Residential mowers are for part time home owner use. Commercial mowers are rated for hard work, 8 to 12 hours a day, 5 to 7 days a week. A typical residential mower is rated for 500 hours to 800 hours of life time service. A commercial mower is rated for 2000 to 3000 hours of life time service. I mow 5 acres of very rough land in Central Mississippi. I also have a fast growing grass type named Bahia Grass that loves hot dry or wet weather. To put it mildly Bahia Grass grows form 4 to 8 inches a week. I've owned 3 lawn tractors in the last 20 years. The first 2 were junk. In 1999 I got a Sabre by John Deere with a 46 inch deck, powered by a Briggs Vanguard. It did a pretty good job. But I couldn't mow the whole 5 acres. I had to hire a bush hogger to come in every year. Then if it rained a lot, my grass would get out of hand in a hurry. So my mowed yard got smaller, and smaller as the years went along. So I had to get a bush hog in more as the years went along. My mowed yard shrunk to about an acre. Than again a bush hogged field is not a pretty sight. My deck gave out last year on my Sabre. By that time my wife and I took on my mother in law's property due to the death of my father in law. Here we were in a wet year, with a broken mower. Things were getting in a bad way fast. I had to order a deck for an end of life mower. That took 2 week to come in. Then I had to paint the deck, and transfer all the hardware from the old deck to the new. That took about 2 more weeks. During that time we had to hire a bush hog, and a lawn care mower to knock the grass down on both properties. My wife and I started researching ztr mowers. Like you we didn't want to spend large amounts of money. We found that residential ztr mower had no longer life spand than our lawn tractor. Ether they had the same stamped deck and residential engines, along with the same hydro transaxles. Or if the mower had a fabricated deck, it still had a 500 hour rated engine. So 50 hours a year = 10 years. If we were going to spend that much on a mower, we wanted longer than 10 years. We looked, and looked, and researched, and looked, and researched. During that time the grass never stopped growing. I got the Sabre back into action. We got the mil's lawn back in to shape. But we lost the battle at our place. We made our decision. Funny someone mentioned our mower above. We got a 52 inch Bad Boy Pup with a 30 hp Kohler Command Pro. I've got to say that mower changed our life. What took us day to mow. We now can do it all in about 3 hours. And that's not traveling all that fast with a 52 inch deck. I'd say average speed is about 5 mph. We have trees, and rough grounds. I've rambled enough, so I'll show some pictures. Oh! I haven't found the ride to be that bad. Good Luck! ms

Maybe you will need to support the frame and loosen the trans on that side.

IMHO? Look at the Dee Z2 by Dixie Chopper? I just bought the 54" deck unit after 3 months of looking? I did my research they also make a 42" unit and are a great Zero Turn Mower. The Deck is killer and I love how easy it was to Learn! YMMV, Beale.

This unit has a 500 hr engineered life cycle therefore 1/2 price of the original list price for a pristine unit may be possible in a good sellers market !