My experience — don’t do it if you have rough terrain and plan to use your tractor for other work in the summer. I’ve had this tractor for three years, and the Easy Over system worked great the first year. Since then, it’s been a nightmare. Because the linkage stays attached to the tractor the whole time (you can remove it, but it takes hours — which defeats the purpose of “Easy Over”), it’s vulnerable when using other attachments like a box blade or backhoe. At some point — I can’t remember if it was while box blading or backhoeing — the linkage got slightly bent. From then on, the Easy Over never worked properly. I had a service tech manually straighten it, but even after that, it constantly needed pulling and adjusting to get it lined up so the pin would lock properly when I drove over. The next summer, I hit a large rock (again while box blading, I think), and the already weakened linkage completely bent. After that, it was beyond repair. I’m in Canada, and the replacement linkage has been quoted at around $1,000. At this point, I’m seriously considering switching to the standard mid-mount mower just to avoid more linkage issues in the future.
