Why You Should Build a Mud Mower [ESSAY]

Wrote this for an english class I had to do a while ago, figured I'd share here.


Mud Mowers: Why You Should Build One.

     You’re at a local off-road park, riding your 2023 Polaris Ranger 450. As you round a corner, you see a flash of green fly past on the inside of the corner. The last thing you see before it disappears from of site is the words “John Deere.” “I had no idea John Deere made ATVs,” you think as you continue through a mud hole.

You were right.
     
      While there has been no John Deere ATV for over 20 years, there is a growing community of stingy farmers and rednecks that modify the riding lawnmower that your grandpa might use to cut the grass into a fast, unique, capable, and cost-effective machine with a large enough community of riders to provide ample instruction and information. You should build an offroad mower because it is cheaper than an ATV, far more unique, and there is a large community of people who can help you.

     Off-road mowers are extremely cost-effective. An older, good-quality, running ATV will usually cost you around 3000 dollars, while you can obtain an old lawn or garden tractor for under 300 dollars. The parts for modification are also very reasonable, with a good set of used offroad tires running between 150 and 200 dollars, a pulley swap (the modification needed to obtain speeds of between 15 and 50 km/h) usually costing around 75 dollars, and other smaller modifications such as a throttle pedal, a clutch upgrade, lights, paint, and larger fuel tanks usually not totaling more than 150 dollars. These machines are also very light, so light-duty winches can be used, costing not more than 150 dollars, and can be found on sale at most local department stores for under 90 dollars.

     Offroad mowers are also far more unique than the common ATV. While there are close to 10.5 million households in the US that own an ATV, there are only around 65,000 that own a modified lawn tractor, less than a tenth of those who own an ATV. It is often fascinating to watch people who refuse to go the speed limit recoil in shock as they are passed by a common riding lawnmower.

     If you wish to build an offroad lawn mower (or a “mud mower,” as they are commonly referred to in online spaces), there is a large community of people that can help you. There are many Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members that can give you advice; there are online forums that have detailed builds and pictures; and there are many YouTube channels that document both the use and the detailed build process of these machines. In addition to all that, there are also local communities of people that you can gain information from. Many fairs and large community events have lawnmower races as well as lawn tractor pulls, and some even have rally-style races.

     Modifying a riding lawnmower to drive offroad can often be a cost-effective, unique, and easy alternative to purchasing an ATV; it is far cheaper, really turns heads, and the large community of other lawnmower modifiers makes it reasonably easy to do.


[NOTES]
- Honestly I made up the statistic about there being 65000 lawnmower offroaders in the US, I basically just did a survey of the larger facebook groups and made an educated guess.
-It's actually been about 18 years since John Deere made an ATV, but 20 years is a little rounder

RIP Mr Hemingway I know you would have loved mud mowers



Yknow it’s funny to think that CS Lewis lived at the same time as Sears marketed David Bradley tractors

Gonna have to send this to everyone I know

I have been watching "Off Road Lawn Mowers" on daily motion, but, using the phrase "mud mowers" I came up with a lot more videos to watch for research. I guess I was behind the eight ball using my own search terms. Thank you!