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As long as the Cub or Cub Lo-Boy isn't sick, a Woods 42 will mow pretty much anything you can get under a Cub's front axle. The IH/Danco 60", the Woods 59, and the Mott Hammerknife are better used as finish mowers, in my experience. I have no experience with the belly mower built by Bush Hog. The Woods 42 can also be used as a finish mower, but only as long as the blades are very sharp. When I was a teenager, my dad did some custom mowing. Just after he sold his Super M, he landed a job mowing a 26-acre field for a local manufacturing company The field got mowed once a year. So for about a week, every night from 6 pm to about midnight, Dad would take the Cub with the Woods 42 and attack the 26-acre field. In normal-height stuff, the Cub would mow about an acre an hour and use about a gallon of gas an hour. On that field, the fuel consumption was about normal, but to get a really nice job, some of the stuff had to be cut twice. One afternoon, my brother pitched in and mowed on that job for Dad. He changed to Dad's fresh set of blades, gassed up the tractor anc checked the oil, and was on his way. When Dad came to check on him at 6 pm, my brother was complaining that the mower just wasn't cutting well. Dad looked at the blades...and turned them around, after discovering that my brother had been mowing all afternoon with the back side of the blades, and the freshly sharpened edge hadn't been used! But the Cub would handle it. Of course, Dad had a power-unit governor on this one, that let it run 2200 rpm or so instead of the stock 1800, and the carb jet had been drilled out to make more power...but for what you're talking about, a stock Cub in good mechanical condition should be able to handle it with a Woods 42; a mower with lawnmower blades isn't designed to do the kind of work that a mower with swinging blades can do. And I believe the 1959 spec book I have shows the Cub at 10.75 belt hp, 10.08 drawbar hp, and 13.4 gross flywheel horsepower. Again, a 12 hp Cub Cadet isn't up to the job, primarily because of the design of the mower.
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