Toro AWD worth the investment cuts great on sloped cutting and up hill .
FWD vs RWD mowers
- Thread starter JHZR2
- Start date
I find Personal Pace to be great on flat surfaces but annoying on hilly areas. My main reason for buying self-propelled mowers is to help with those hilly areas - for the flat stuff I can push or use a riding mower - and for hills I find that having to push in order for PP drive to engage defeats the purpose of having a self-propelled mower. It's much better to engage the drive and hang on 
I ended up with a Honda hydrostatic RWD which works really well for climbing hills and (even more importantly IMO) for keeping the mower going in the right direction on side hills. I found that mowing across the hill worked best for the hilly parts of my yard, which basically wrap around three sides of the house.
Agree that FWD is preferable for maneuvering around obstacles, and if I were mowing a flat lawn I would probably go with FWD just because of that.
In my case the most challenging parts of the lawn were the small flat areas right by the house at the top of a slope... where I wanted RWD to get up the hill and FWD-only once I was up. Fortunately I was able to move some downspouts (basically rotating them 90 degrees) which made it easy to get into the confined spaces without going up steep hills, and so now I can use a light push mower there.
I ended up with a Honda hydrostatic RWD which works really well for climbing hills and (even more importantly IMO) for keeping the mower going in the right direction on side hills. I found that mowing across the hill worked best for the hilly parts of my yard, which basically wrap around three sides of the house.
Agree that FWD is preferable for maneuvering around obstacles, and if I were mowing a flat lawn I would probably go with FWD just because of that.
In my case the most challenging parts of the lawn were the small flat areas right by the house at the top of a slope... where I wanted RWD to get up the hill and FWD-only once I was up. Fortunately I was able to move some downspouts (basically rotating them 90 degrees) which made it easy to get into the confined spaces without going up steep hills, and so now I can use a light push mower there.
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