What's up everyone? Welcome to The Durbin Compound! So today I wanted to go over
a topic on how to basically use a zero-turn when you've never run one in your life.
Obviously, the first zero-turn that you buy is going to be probably the first-zero turn that you'll operate.
You may have a friend that you can operate theirs and get a feel for it, you know,
but some of you, like me, when I went to go get my first zero-turn, I didn't know anybody with a zero-turn.
And, you know, I went to the dealership and I bought a mower from a friend. But I certainly didn't tell him
that it was my first zero-turn and I had never run one before. I'm like, yeah I'm a pro man.
I've been, you know, thousands of hours on these machines. And you know, you don't need to be a guy that,
you know, is scared to admit that you've never run anything before. More often times than not,
your sales guy will walk you through the process and give you a little rundown on how the machine works
before you buy it. He's there to set you up for success. He's there to take care of you.
Never be afraid to admit like, hey I've never used this piece of machinery before.
But I went to go buy one from a friend, and by all means, I let him put it on my trailer. I was like, oh no worries,
I'll run it when I get to the house. Right? So, I wanted to go over a couple basics on just what
you need to know, so you know, if you're looking for a video like this and don't want to look
like a complete dummy when you go... well, here's a little rundown for you. So, anytime you start
a motor from cold, if it's not a fuel injected engine, it's going to need choked. So, I'm going
to show you the process of pulling the choke all the way up. Maybe it's a lever that goes back and forth.
Maybe it's just a push button like this and it pulls straight out. After you operate the
choke and pull it all the way out, you're going to make sure that you're in the turtle position. Right?
You want to run the mower as slow as possible. And then you're going to simply start it up.
After it begins to fire, you just slowly press the choke in, and it will idle out.
Okay, there's a couple things that you need to know about your panel here.
And basically this is your PTO, or your power takeoff. So this is how you operate your blades.
So most of them you'll pull out towards you to engage your blades. You'll push in to turn them off.
We're not going to worry about our blades right now. We're just going to keep it in turtle mode.
Keep it in slow. Okay? Now let's talk about our arms here. Now once you have your arms in
they'll be activated. Right? So, there's some little slots down here to basically say, you know,
It'll show you forward and backward. Okay? So the number one thing you want to worry about
when you actually go to move the mower around is keep your hands loose. Don't death grip them
and worry about being all herky, you know. If you really grip up on the controls,
you're going to be really herky-jerky with it. And so the easiest way to learn it is to learn it at idle and
just how the mower works. Okay? So forward, backwards, and just you know, manipulating the arms
and getting it to move how you want it to. So after a little bit you'll get used to it.
The most common mistakes I see are people will just run it up. They're like I'm ready to go.
I'm just going to throttle up and go. Right? So the higher you go, the more responsive it is. Okay?
So, those same movements that I just made in idle are a lot, a lot crazier, when you have
it idled way up. So, the number one tip I have for you is to keep your hands free and just kind of
sitting on the arms, not losing control of them. But when you go over bumps and stuff, you want your arms
to move around the, or you want your actual hands, to move around the arms. You don't want to
have a death grip on them, so every time you're hitting something you're, you know, hitting
back and forth. So, that's just one of those main tips that I say. Just keep it loose. Keep it relaxed,
and you'll be just fine, so that when you do throttle up, you can make nice fluid movements.
All right! So we'll go ahead and shut the mower down, so that my voice isn't drowned out by the engine.
So, some models have a parking brake. And so, some of the time you're going to have to worry
about a mechanical parking brake that you need to release. Some of them are a lever.
Some of them are a foot pedal. This Hustler FasTrak does not have a parking brake, so I can't really show you
on this model. I'd have to go to a showroom and show you all kinds of different models.
So you have your parking brake. Your arms come in and out. You have your seat switch, right? So if you
were to get off of the mower while the blades are running, it's going to shut off on you.
So, there's tons of safety features. The mower won't start with the arms in and it won't start
without your butt in the seat. So there are a lot of safety features that go into it.
So, it's kind of hard to hurt yourself on one of these. It's just like a riding lawn mower, or a lawn tractor.
You get off of it--the blades stop--all that stuff. Right? So, then we talk about our mower deck.
So all of them have kind of their own proprietary design for what they are. This one's a foot pedal.
And then it has a bunch of different holes that you can set the pin down in.
And then it just comes back to the stop and it's set at the height that you want to mow at.
So pretty simple design. Pretty hard to mess up.
You know, just don't run over anything crazy and you'll be all right. So let's talk about
operating the PTO or engaging the blades. So, you don't want to engage the blades at full throttle.
You want to engage the blades at partial throttle. There's kind of a cheat sheet here on the side
that shows, hey, where your throttle should be when you want to engage the blades. Man!
Sorry guys! I'm sweating out here! It's 95 degrees. So, you know, it'll show you exactly where you
want to engage the blades. Now, the real reason why you want to do this like this is because
you don't want the engine at full horsepower or full power and then engage the belt because
it will prematurely wear your belt. Okay? So, you're basically...you have all of these things that are a dead stop
and then--Bam--you're going to engage that PTO. And you're trying to get everything running really fast.
Right? So you engage it at mid-throttle. And then you ramp it up slowly. Okay?
And then there's another indicator that says, "Don't turn off the blades until you're back down at idle."
So, same thing. You're taking all this rotating mass and you want to turn it off when it's at a lower RPM,
so there's not a lot of momentum going. So you want to disengage the blades at idle, where there's the
the least amount of momentum going. So, you really can't mess it up. I mean, when I got the mower,
I read through the instruction manual 100 times. And you know, it's reading material for the toilet,
or in bed at night. And you just read through all of the precautions and stuff. And you get very
intimate with the instructions. And then, literally, get out in the yard and have fun. And you know,
go out and mow the yard. Make it look beautiful. Right? I have other videos on how to turn a
zero-turn mower--to avoid, you know, divots in the grass, or tearing up your grass. I have how to stripe your yard,
how to mow in the correct way, so that you get the best stripes, or best bang for your buck.
There's a bunch of other videos in the series. I hope you guys enjoyed this video.
Of course, give my video a thumbs up. Or a thumbs down. Whatever you guys are into!
And if you're subscribed to the channel, well, I guess we'll see you guys in the next video.