Neil from Messick's here to do a backyard demo for you today. I have a cab on my Zero-Turn mower. The fine folks at Curtis for a kind enough to hook us up for one to be able to show off for YouTube. Really unique, something you don't see a whole lot especially with all of the supply chain problems of Kubota's base machine here today. There's not a whole lot of them out here at this point, but it's really surprising how many you do see. This is not an inexpensive option for this machine. I have come to love having it on my machine. Not only is it air conditioned, but I also have horrible seasonal allergies, and makes me feel so much better when I come back into the house after mowing.
Even now here in basically October at this point, when we're mowing when it's 60 degrees outside, having a closure around you is actually nice. You don't think of wanting a bit of a heat enclosure on a Zero-Turn, but believe it or not I use it a lot. The heated air conditioning art while we're out here doing this today, every time I get in this machine and go out and cut my grass and look out through that front window, I chuckle myself about the windshield wiper that's on the front, who on earth should need a windshield wiper on your mower. Even if you've got that cab there got me thinking a little bit. I'm going to go out here and cut the grass in the rain.
Now we've had a drought here in PA. It's been a long time since we've had a lot of rain to be able to get out, but the remnants of Hurricane Ian are rolling up here through Pennsylvania. Now we've got rainy weather happening outside here this weekend to be able to get out and demo this. We're going to mow my front yard out here today. I've got more than enough grass that needs to be cut off. It's heavier in fact than what I usually let it go. I'm going to get out and see whether this thing can cut clean. One, is it okay to mow your grass when it's this wet? Also does the cab keep me dry? Is this in addition to heat and air conditioning and lack of allergies, is this also a way to be able to extend your mowing into say a rainstorm if you need to? If you're getting out in the morning or the end of the day when you need to get something done and the weather's not cooperating. Come along here with me today. Give this thing a go and see what it does. Several things to talk about here. The basic premise of going out and cutting your grass when it's wet is way more acceptable than what most people would guess. You might notice actually when commercial landscapers go out, they tend to start really early in the morning before it gets too hot outside and they are frequently cutting the grass when there's some dew and stuff on it.
The cut quality of a yard when it's wet actually isn't terrible, believe it or not. When you go outside and you look at this in the morning when it brightens up a little bit outside, you'll notice that it looks the same as when it does when it's dry for the most part. Your clippings are going to clump a little bit more and you're going to have a lot of grass accumulate on the underside of your mower deck. When you're done, it's a good idea to scrape the underside of your deck out. On the Kubota, that's really, really easy because of the articulating front axle.
You just flip two pins, spin your axle 90 degrees, and it's really easy to scrape the underside of the deck out. I had some buildup down there. It wasn't as much as what I would've guessed, but if you don't want to let that down there. That wet grass on the metal will corrode things over time and shorten the lifespan of your deck. Thumbs up to going out and cutting your grass when it's not perfectly dry. Now, not everything was easy out here today. There was a couple of things about the grass. When it's wet, it doesn't behave exactly the same as when it's dry. One of those things is turning. When you go and make your zero turns in your dry grass, if you're careful about it, you could do it without tearing the grass up as you go.
That's much more difficult when it's wet like this. I made a lot of my rotations out on the driveway. I made it cut my patterns in a little bit of a different way so that I can make my rotations on the driveway. You put those things in the back of your head and be a little bit smarter about how you cut the pattern of your yard. You might be able to save yourself a little bit of turf damage while you're doing this. Because of that grass being soft, it is also going to slide easier. We talked about Zero-Turns before and how they don't perform that well on hills. That is obviously a lot worse when the grass is wet. The machine will break loose and slide very easily on wet grass. You're going to want to be extra careful if you're out in a rainy condition like this. You need to stand on the cooler. Yes.
Jack: I'm so tall, daddy.
Neil: There you go. You're going to be on that side and I'm going to be on this side. Jack, tell me about the cab on the mower a little bit. Did it keep you dry?
Jack: Relatively.
Neil: Relatively dry. Could you see through the cab?
Jack: Relatively.
Neil: Relatively, and relatively is an important fact. The one thing that we had trouble with here while we were mowing. While that cab kept us perfectly dry, which I was actually a little surprised about, because when you look at it the doors don't fit, like seal up 100% perfectly. No way were we getting enough water around the sides of the doors or anything that we're going to get damp inside the cab. The one problem that we did have though is that the lack of any defrosting or defogger inside the cab. All of your air vents are coming from behind your head where the air pack is located in the rear.
We weren't able to keep the windscreen clear. As all the moisture from the rain would build up inside of there and all of our hot heads sitting inside there talking, trying to make a video very quickly fog the inside of the glass. Now I was able to grab a rag and wipe it off periodically and be able to keep going, but it would get irritating to be doing that regularly. Is there anything here that's going to stop you from mowing the grass in the remnants of a hurricane? No. It seems like actually, could be done just fine.
Jack: It has a 24 inch rubber wiper wiping an acrylic windshield. Now what else that I can say? I want be like, knowledge, know stuff like you. Give me all the facts you know about this machine and then I'll tell it to the camera.
Neil: Jack, tell me a little bit about the mower here. [chuckles] Hold on. Stop. Okay, we do it here. I do that too. Jack, tell me about our mower here.
Jack: It's a ZD1211 with 26 horsepower. A 1.3 in line. It's 1.2 though.
Neil: 1.2.
Jack: In line engine.
Neil: In line three.
Jack: In line--
Neil: Wait, you're such a car enthusiast, bud
Jack: I'm not a mower enthusiast though.
Neil: In line three cylinder engine. Is it a gas or diesel?
Jack: Gas, I would guess.
Neil: No, it's a diesel. Is it a gas or diesel?
Jack: Diesel.
Neil: Good. Thanks, bud. Now we've done other videos on Kubota's diesel Zero-Turn mowers before, but there's a couple of things that you should know here. There's top level things and explains a little bit about why Curtis chooses this machine to build this cab for. Kubota diesels are a little bit more unique than a lot of the other Zero-Turn mowers that are out there. This is a market where most products are more similar than they are different. This one has a lot of things that really set it apart from what you find in a lot of the rest of the industry. The transmission that's in it is a unified transmission that is engineered by Kubota.
It is not an off the shelf hydro gear parker transmission that you find in a lot of other machines. Going from the transmission down to the mower deck is a wet PTO clutch with a shaft drive that goes down to the deck to transfer the power down. What's very typical in machines like this is a magnetic clutch that snaps onto a belt. This is a lot more durable design and one that is a lot more efficient as well. You lose power between those clutches and belts, shafts and gears like you have in this system here transfer that power a lot more efficiently, put a lot more of it to use.
There's a lot of things like that that build this tank-like Zero-Turn that Kubota builds. That's a great foundation for Curtis in order to be able to build this cab on top of. Although I don't think things are going to end here. Hopefully we're going to see this on some other make machines here in the very near future. Jack, what is this piece of equipment commonly used for?
Jack: Well, it's used for water gun fights, speeding and powering across the yard. Well, it's used for water gun fights. This motorized vehicle of transportation and mowing is also very good for using water gun fights against your older brother, because see, this thingy right here can open up. No one knows why. Then you can just sit on the floor here and then take your most powerful water gun that you probably got from Amazon or something. Then while your daddy can drive you around, you can go pow, pow, pow, and wipe out everyone. You have a cab here, but it's not very official.
Neil: In addition to being a great mower, it's also a water gun tank.
Jack: It's also a motorized vehicle of transportation and mowing. It makes a very good getaway mower. It's also very good. See the choppers are very good to-- The choppers are very good at chopping up rocks and stuff that are in your yard. Outro.
Neil: Outro
Jack: Outro.
Neil: A little bit of silliness today, but hopefully you can take a couple little elements of truth out this stuff we talked about here today.
Jack: Come on. Say tibs of truth.
Neil: Tibs is not a thing.
Jack: Yes, it is. Cause I made it a thing. Come on say it. Say it.
Neil: You can't laugh every time I start. We're never going to get this done. Little bit of silliness today, but hopefully there's a couple of tibs of truth in here somewhere that we can take away from this. This cab adds a bunch of different flexibility here, and while we're often selling these things for their air conditioning, there's a lot of other added benefit here as well. As we talked to, even if you don't have a machine with a cab on it, mowing wet grass isn't that big of a deal. If you're shopping for a piece of equipment and we can help, saying you need some parts for your machine, because your kids busted it up, Give us a call here at Messick's. We're glad to help. We're available 800-222-3373 or online @Messick's.com
