[Sam Mac]

Please don't take this the wrong way. The Big Box stores because of the enormous buying power that they have tell Cub Cadet and John Deere if you want our business this is what we will pay for a tractor with X amount of power and a certain size deck so then Cub and JD go to the people that make the engines and transmissions and tell them what they need in order to make the deal work. So Kohler came up with the Courage engine, B&S also did the same. Unfortunately it was designed to be a low cost engine to fit the marketing need. The stuff sold by the Cub dealers while a few $$$ more had Kawasaki engines if I recall correctly. I doubt that anything you did caused the problem. As far as what would cause a rod to fail, lots of things probably in these things just not enough meat, not sure but if you look on Craig's list you see these low end tractors for sale often with failed engines or transmissions. I hate it that MTD has whored the Cub name the way they have. JD is doing the same. I wish they had kept with a quality product and skipped the Big Box stores. It is what it is. I hope you are still covered under warranty. If you are I would get it fixed and then sell it. Just my 2 cents.