John Deere EZtrak 425 Zero Turn Riding Mower
by James Richards
(Rutland, ND)
I have owned my John Deere EZtrak zero-turn riding mower with a 48" deck for over 4 years now. It was purchased from a local dealer. I have used it over the past summers as the main mower in my Summer lawn mowing career. The EZtrack is rarely in the shop, and I can proudly say I've been able to successfully perform the majority of the maintenance work (such as changing the oil, greasing the joints, sharpening and changing blades, and changing the belts) by myself over those 4 years.
The mowing deck is easy to detach and replace, and the mower proves easy to clean as well - still sporting its bright green and yellow paint job after a good wash. In my opinion, the EZtrak 400 series holds up very well to its weekly task of mowing about 18 lawns, totaling about 10 hours on the mower every week. It has always been sure to start, and easy to operate.
As for any drawbacks, I can say the top two reasons my mower has been out of commission are: Flat tires, and broken belts. The flat tires are no fault of the mower itself, and are easily fixed when the tires are taken in and filled with tubes, but the mower has a strange tendency to eat through belts faster than many of my other mowers.
This could possibly be because I used my John Deere EZtrak much more often than it was designed for (as a residential mower). Either way, the belt has to be replaced often and it breaks sometimes - that's my only real mechanical gripe. I have a few general design gripes as well. This may have been fixed in the newer models, but my EZtrak does not have an easy-to-read gas gauge, and relies on the owner to glance back and read the level in the transparent gas tank behind him.
I typically have gotten carried away a few times per summer, forgetting to fill up, and running out of fuel. This has been a slight annoyance. In addition, there are two cup holders located on my machine, neither of which are very good at all at holding beverages. 20-ounce bottles fall out at the brush of a branch, yet larger bottles and most coffee mugs do not fit well.
In the few instances where I have been lucky enough to remember to bring a beverage with me, I usually find myself driving over the lawn in search of my lost bottle. That said, it is still a great overall mower, mostly for larger lawns.
Yet, this John Deere Zero Turn mower is still extremely capable on smaller lawns, and I rarely have the need to use a push mower or weed trimmer to trim around lawn obstacles, because the zero-turn capabilities of the EZtrak 425 get close enough that there is no trimming to be done. It has been a great mower for my work, where I do a large variety of lawns: from open and wide, to compact and tree-ridden.
