06/27/2026
This is a little wordy, but well worth it. I don’t normally disparage other folks’ equipment, but this past week we took in an absolute piece of mechanical Chinese-made piece of sh$t. It’s a Dek Z-Beast zero turn that was sold by Home Depot a few years back. This mower, with less than 100 hours, hit a rock and completely sheared the blade spindle assembly into two pieces. In all the years of tinkering, I’ve never seen nor heard of an assembly shearing the way it did. The aluminum quality and integrity of the spindle assembly is beyond pure crap. In an attempt to replace the assembly with a new one, we discovered the parent company has since gone toes up. The only available source for parts is GXi Power Equipment in North Carolina. The phone system is all automated and there’s no way of speaking to a human. Their website is only useful for looking up a part number and sending an email, and based on an email reply I received, I think I found the village’s missing idiot. In any case, the broken assembly was welded, ground, installed, and after a trial run, held up while the blades were engaged but not under load. The owner fully understood the hail Mary we were trying to pull off especially since he’s been trying to find an assembly and attempting to deal with GXi for the last three years. Yes, the mower has been sitting for three years, unused, with less than 100 hours. At the request of the owner, we also welded the broken exhaust system and installed a new deck chute which had been previously purchased by the owner years ago. The dead battery was replaced and a courtesy look-over prior to returning the machine was done. The machine was then delivered with all fingers crossed. We also serviced an older Ariens zero-turn and the owner stated it had recently begun making funny noises from the mower deck area. After looking the deck over, we found the preverbal missing glove wrapped up in and around the idler pulley. After glove removal, no more funny noises from the deck. Along with this, the owner asked us to replace the muffler which required the engine to be partially lifted out of the machine to get to the mounting studs/nuts and create clearance for the removal/install. As always, comments are with the pics.
