Let’s get some perspective on this problem. Is it even a problem?

There will be thousands of you looking to buy a new riding mower this year and it seems like most of you will at least consider the new Craftsman lawn and garden tractors with Turn Tight technology. You will read the reviews on mysears, craftsman.com, views, consumersearch and the tractor forums. You will find helpful reviews and some reviews from people who hate this new direction. I want to spend a little time explaining why you will be reading some of these negative reviews.

If you remember, last year I wrote an article about the direction of the new Craftsman Professional tractors. I warned him that to go below a 14-inch turning radius, the new riding mowers had “negative camber” that was very different from the steering he was used to on his old Craftsman. This new Turn Tight steering is also different than what you’re used to and will require some simple changes to the way you drive to make it work right for you.

This is the first time such a tight turning radius (8 inches) has been offered on a residential mower, but an extremely small turning radius has been available on commercial mowers since the 1970s. This tight steering is similar to the steering used on older front-mounted commercial mowers. The Toro Groundsmaster, Jacobson Turfcat, and John Deere F930 used radical steering to give those mowers a very tight turning radius. I have a lot of experience driving and owning these older units, so I want to tell you a little about your new tractor.

I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I like this new Turn Tight technology. I think it’s the answer most of you have been looking for who want the maneuverability of a zero turn mower but don’t want the hassle of a zero turn mower. Zero turns are expensive, notorious for tearing up grass, difficult to learn to drive, and residential zero turns in particular are terrible on hills. Plus… these new tractors will drop stuff!

Okay, so what problems will some owners have with the new Turn Tight Steering?

1. Speed. When the grass is very wet or very dry it is slippery. Especially when you’re mowing downhill, it can be slippery enough that your tractor doesn’t want to turn right. Because it is within the magic radius of “14 inches”, the

Turn Tight will be a bit more sensitive to these types of turns and there will be times when you won’t be able to use the Turn Tight feature. Then what do you do? Plain and simple: slow down to make your turns. When you get to your turn, slow down to a “walking speed” and then turn. Use common sense (your own experience mowing the lawn) to determine when to slow down and turn.

2. Camber and Radical Geometry. To help you turn in, Craftsman has put a small amount of negative camber into the steering. This causes the wheels to “lean” inward when you make a tight turn. This helps the tractor turn better, but… if you mow on extremely sandy ground, the front wheels can sink in and leave scuff marks when you turn. Therefore, if you normally cut more sand clumps than grass, you may not be able to use the tight twist function without tearing up the turf. The solution, don’t turn it as short as the real mower turns.

3. Wide position and obstructions. Structurally, this new front steering has been beefed up to handle the tighter turning radius, but you have to realize that it’s now 2 inches wider than your old Craftsman mower. This means that you and your teen should watch out for the tree sticking out of the ground and the corner of the foundation the first few times you mow. If you hit a tree with the front steering running at full speed, you can bend or break it.

4. Make sense of negative criticism. Let’s put the negative reviews you may read into perspective. Thousands will buy these new tractors. But how many will actually go back to the review sites and tell everyone else how they like their new garden tractor?

I haven’t asked Sears, Kmart and the review sites for specifics, but my guess is that for every thousand mowers sold, 2-3 people write a review. And those reviews are skewed by owners who really like their mower well enough to tell everyone else or by owners who have had problems with the mower (or the retailer) and need to ventilate. This bias is compounded by the fact that if a person is truly unhappy, they will go on ALL the review sites and vent.

If each of the 1,000 Sears Full-Line stores sells only 20 garden tractors a year and each of the 1,500 Sears Essentials, Sears Hardware, and Sears Hometown stores sells only 10 a year, that means at least 35,000 tractors sold. How many reviews do you usually see on a review site? Thousands? No, go check out Sears.com. You will see 10 reviews, 26 reviews, and in some cases maybe 60 or 70 reviews for a given tractor.

So when you read 5 negative reviews for a garden tractor on one of the review sites, remember that there are at least 5000 other people who are satisfied enough with the tractor not to write.