Craftsman LT2000

by Richard Moore
(Mount Pleasant, NC, USA)

My lawn tractor is a three year old Craftsman LT2000 lawn tractor sold by Sears. This tractor has a 17.5 hp Briggs & Straton Intek engine, a six speed transmission, and boasts a 42" dual-blade deck system.

It even has a cup holder on one fender, but this is a little too shallow to be of much use (a bottle of water simply will not stay in place, resulting in my constantly picking it up from numerous drops in the yard).

Overall, this is an excellent lawn tractor. While intended as an "entry level" tractor for private residential use, it borders on being capable of commercial tasks.

I maintain three laws with my LT2000, totaling about three acres. It cuts all with ease. The engine is perhaps its best feature, able to propel the tractor at speeds faster than a walk while mowing down even tall, thick stands of grass.

As long as the blades are sharp, the engine will provide more than enough power to do the job.

The transmission is sufficient, and common to most entry level tractors. It is simple enough to switch between transmission speeds using the fender-mounted shifter.

But the clutch-brake combination makes for jerky shifts as you almost have to stop to change speeds. As there isn't much take-up in the belts and the braking mechanism, letting out the clutch/brake usually results in a slight jerk.

The feature I like the least about this tractor is the use of cast aluminum in the mandrels.

These are the spindles that bolt to the deck and contain the bearings and shafts that mount the mower pulleys and blades and allow them to turn freely.

These will break rather easily and are not cheap to replace.

One of these will break if you hit something while mowing that causes the blade to stop suddenly, such as a tree stump (hidden by leaves), a piece of firewood, a large stone or house ground rod mostly buried in the dirt, or similar solid and well secured objects.

And the mower, the deck gear in particular, is a little noisy, but much of that may be attributed to age.

For the most part, though, this is a very good tractor and I am well satisfied with it.

It handles well, turns as sharply as you could expect for this type of tractor, and performs quite well at what it was designed to do.

I would recommend it to others looking for a low cost, entry level lawn tractor.