I let tires air pressure down and now I love my new mower I am 88 years old

Buyer beware! Low quality parts and assembly. Tractor Supply won't help. They say call Cub Cadet. Cub Cadet says to take it to the dealer. The dealer says that since I didn't buy it from them they are gonna take 3-4 weeks to replace steering dampers under warranty - a 5 minute job and they have the part in stock right now. The problems: Steering dampers were faulty from the factory. When sitting on the mower with lap bars in neutral, they fall to full-forward position on their own. Plus they only damped one way, from neutral to forward. When going from forward to neutral, there was no damping. The lap bars do not return to neutral on their own, in fact they increase to full speed on their own. This happened the very first day I owned the unit. Now, at 30 hours, one damper has completely blown and it immediately falls to the full-forward position if you take your hand off for a split second to scratch your nose. THIS MOWER WILL GET YOU KILLED and drive you over a cliff or into a pond. It has a mind of its own. It is unsafe. Not to mention - the lack of damping is very hard on the weak 2200 transmissions. The transmissions were set up so poorly that the lap bars are offset to make it drive straight. One lap bar adjustment has 3/4" of thread showing (slowing that stick down) and the other has 0 thread showing. At full-forward or full-reverse the handles are misaligned by about 2 inches. Why can't Cub Cadet, the manufacturer, just send me a pair of steering dampers? Would that make too much sense? The dealer also wants the WHOLE mower delivered to them 30 miles away and gas is $5/gallon. The steering dampers are $90 for a pair and it takes 5 minutes to swap them out, but the cartel - I mean the dealer - said they are going to punish me and hold the mower for 3-4 weeks if I want them replaced under warranty. I have 3 awful options right now: 1.) I am forced to either spend $90 on faulty manufactured parts (are the new ones going to be any better?) or 2.) forced to hire a landscaping company for a month PLUS spend 2 hours of my time and $50 in gasoline to deliver and pick up my mower from the dealer,. when I just spend over $4000 on a mower + spare belts and blades or 3.) I am unable to mow my grass for a month and have to pay a ticket from zoning for tall grass PLUS spend 2 hours of my time and $50 in gasoline to deliver and pick up my mower from the dealer 4.) Cub Cadet mails me the steering dampers and I replace them within 5 minutes of receiving them. JUST KIDDING! THIS IS NOT AN OPTION BECAUSE CUB CADET IS GARBAGE AND THEIR DEALERS ARE THUGS. Which choice would you make? You will get the same dilemma if you buy this mower. If you really want this model of mower, DO NOT buy it from Tractor Supply, buy it from your local cartel - cough DEALER cough - so that when you inevitably have problems they swap your bad part and do the 5 minute job (and they get reimbursed from Cub Cadet for the parts) and they might even do it on the same day for you. They might even take your faulty dampers and hand you a pair of new dampers and you don't even have to trailer your whole mower to them. Otherwise they will blatantly tell you that they are going to hold your machine hostage for 3-4 weeks as a punishment for buying the unit somewhere else that had a better price and 0% financing. The person I talked to at Cub Cadet didn't care and they were not helpful. I asked him why they don't ship out small warranty parts directly to customers and he didn't have an answer. I am debating on taking the $500-$1000 loss and selling this mower to move to a more reliable brand with better customer service.

Does a great job. Easy and solid! Makes mowing fun, not a chore! No issues so far.

Bought z54 on 3/6/26 it broke with 6 hrs on it. TSC wasn’t much help but did say it was warranty issue. Called cub cadet and was able to get case number and where to take it. Took it for repair on 5/4/26. Still haven’t gotten it back. They said the part was a warranty but wouldn’t pay for shipping of it. Took 14 days or better to get the part and now I’m told I will have to pay labor. This is not good customer service standing behind their product after spending that kind of money for it. Been in the shop longer than I’ve owned it. I would not recommend this to anyone.