Honda may have good engines, but the plastic decks on their more expensive consumer line would be a deal breaker for me. I would much rather buy an aluminum deck Toro or Lawnboy or a steel deck Snapper. I use to work for Honda as an internal auditor and audited Honda Power Equipments plant in Swepsonville, North Carolina. The plant management told me Honda made the switch from aluminum to plastic to cut costs. I got a Honda Harmony mower for my brother at a company discount. Even though he only uses this mower sparingly as a trim mower and is careful with his equipment, the deck cracked. To top it off Honda delivered this mower without an air filter element and my brother did not catch their mistake until he was doing preventative maintenance, approximately one year after taking delivery. A neighbor bought a plastic deck Honda Harmony a few years ago and did not like its maneuverability and lack of mulching power and gave it to his mother. He bought a much cheaper Troy Built and likes it much better. The Lawnboy Insight Platinum, the Toro Super Recycler, or the Snapper HI-VAC would be better choices than the plastic deck Honda mowers and the Toro and Lawnboy are significantly less expensive. I would choose the Toro if you primarily mulch and the Lawnboy or Snapper if you primarily bag.

As fate would have it, I discovered this forum while looking for a part for my 2006 Cub Cadet LT1045 lawn tractor. I didn't read all of the responses and can only speak from personal experience, but my 1045 is far from a lemon. In 8 years, I've used it weekly to cut my half acre yard during grass growing season in the southeast. For those outside of this area, that would be about 8 months out of the year. I also used it to maintain another half acre lot for 2 seasons, cut my dad's half acre yard 2 seasons and my daughter's quarter acre lot for one season. I've done all of the servicing on it myself and haven't been very consistent with that, changing the oil and filter only 2 times since I bought it. The spark plugs have been replaced once and that was last year and the air filter was replaced for the first time when the plugs were replaced. I've replaced the blades pretty much every year and the deck belt about every two years. I believe I'm on my third battery. With that said, the only non maintenance repairs I have made is replacing one of the shaft/bearing assemblies on the cutting deck, replaced the mulch plug, and as of now I'm about to replace the stator. This tractor resides under my back deck, uncovered at all times when I'm not using it. Because of that, I need a new seat. It's the best investment in lawn care equipment I ever made.

ducati, You are right but also wrong. On the right side, I should have told the OP that the Cub he is considering is an excellent, well made tractor that will give him many years of use in a residential application. In addition, I should have asked him to tell us what he intends to use the Cub for, the size of his property and so forth because all of that plays into whether the Cub will suit his needs 100 percent or not. On the wrong side, it isn't me that is comparing the BX1500 to the Cub........it's Kubota themselves. Whether it's a fair comparison or not.... the people at Kubota must have looked at the marketplace offerings to see what came close to the BX1500 specs regarding size, weight, hp etc and made the decision THEY did. Regardless of the comparison, the resulting replies have given the OP something to think about along with a ringing endorsement of the CC he is considering. Whether the OP can make use of three-point hitch attachments or the PTO on a Kubota or similar tractor, is something that he alone can answer. All I wanted to do, was to make him aware that such things exist since he is prepared to spend six grand. If he had been asking about an LA series, then I wouldn't have brought it up out of the blue, like I did. Few people spend that kind of coin unless they have a fair sized property to maintain. And if you have a fair sized property, then lots of other chores come with it. Having a tractor with the widest flexibility to handle time-saving attachments would seem to be a wise move. The Kubota provides such flexibility.

Hey off_ltd, I bought the JD S240 from a local JD dealer. I didn't buy the extended warranty because it's basically a waste of money. My final considerations, after much research, were the JD 155, the JD 170, the JD S240 and the CC XT2 LX46. I went with the JD S240 because of the upgraded deck and transmission, which are the same as on the X300, and the Kawasaki engine. I prefer the Kawasaki engine over B&S and Kohler engines, although I will admit the B&S and Kohler engines offered in the models I was looking at are good engines. I've had B&S and Kohler engines before and I never had any problems with them. If I had it to do over again, I would have gone with the JD D170 with the 54 inch deck or the CC XT2 LX54, even though I don't really like the boxy front ends of the new CC lawn tractors. Oh well, to each his own. The 42 inch deck on the S240 just doesn't give me a wide enough cut. I'm not dissatisfied in any way with the S240. It seems to be a decent lawn tractor, although I wish these companies would put some kind of suspension on these lawn tractors. I put a mulching kit on it, the one that has the interior deck insert and I went with a set of Gator mulching blades. It does a really good job mulching and I get a nice, uniform cut. I'm thinking about getting a twin bagger attachment for it but I refuse to spend $350.00 for a few pieces of molded plastic. I won't buy it unless it's on sale at a much lower price. I think the CC LX2 would have been a nice lawn tractor. I think I would have bought it if it had a different style but then again, as I've said, to each his own. CC offers a better warranty than JD.