I have a three year old John Deere L120 lawn tractor that has about 195 hours on it. I cut about 1.5-2 acres once a week, maybe a little more often in the fall to pick up leaves. Recently, the blade clutch experienced an electrical failure for which my local dealer quoted a $500-600 repair. While he was checking it out, he also informed me that my blade spindles were worn out, and quoted another $400 to repair. I'm chasing relief through John Deere, with no help so far from customer service. As I search the internet, I'm finding that these both seem to be common problems.

Has anyone else out there seen similar issues and, if so, have you had any luck in pursuing help from John Deere?

I bought this supposedly well respected brand, and paid a little more buying it from a respected dealer. At this point I'm more than a little upset with John Deere quality, and their customer support is ridiculous. Any suggestions? I have a hard time accepting $1000 in repairs for a $2000 tractor three years after purchase.

Well there is john deere, and then there is JOHN DEERE. The latter being the true blue JOHN DEERE. And no you will not get any help from jd. You mentioned that you do leaves sometimes more than once per week. The best protection for the spindles is to grease them regularly and to use high pressure air (blower attached to an air compressor) and blow off the deck after each use and during long periods of use when build up of debri begins to collect on the deck.

Your machine, type of usage, and problems are all identical to my experiences. Here's what I found: If your machine is past warranty, you will not get relief from Deere. Make sure they replace your spindles with the type that have grease fittings. This is critical as the ones you are replacing are the original factory sealed ones JD had problems with (Dealership told me this as mine failed so early, they were under warranty. You always get the true story when it's a warranty repair!) Blow out the spindles with compressed air if you can after each cutting. Do not use water as the spindles get hot and the heat will wick the moisture into the spindle and cause them to fail again (Dealership told me this too). Now that you have grease fittings - keep them greased every 25 hours or so. Mine are holding up great. As for the clutch, mine failed with about 125 hours on the machine, so I'm not surprised to hear yours did as well. Ask them if there is an upgraded clutch they can use or they'll be doing it again in another 150 hours (wish I would have thought of that when they did mine). Those prices you quoted seem a little high - is there another dealership you can check with? Good luck.

You can buy after market spindles for a fraction of what JD spindles cost.There is no such thing as a TRUE JD mower.The only thing that you are buying that is actually John Deere is the name.If you believe this hype that a mower that is bought from a JD dealer is any better than the ones that are bought from Lowe's you are dreaming .If you don't think so ,then go to your parts list and see if there are different parts for the two machines.There is not .The same parts that fit the so called factory JD are the same parts that fit the Lowe's machines.The only difference is that if you bought it from a JD dealer ,you paid 1500 to 2000 dollars more for your machine .Interestingly .JD is now out of the mower market.I understand that once the ones that are at the dealers now are gone.there will be no more .

I replaced stator,which did nothing,now I replaced the flywheel and have gotten ac voltage up from 30vacto 34.5vac which is minimun.