See you found a good deal on the Honda. Congrats, use rec gas in it, keep the air filter clean and should have a great machine to mow with a long time.
I am very happy with my fleet of mowers. I have my big ExMark 60" deck I use 90% of the time and do some commercial mowing with it.
5th year and only so far have had to do routine maintance on it.
Got this Bunton 48 walk behind, I've had to work on it several times because it would not start in the spring. Former owner didn't get the electric start so when it would not spring start once again he said to come and get it. Get it running and find it a new home he didn't want it back.
Mows nice, I am doing the property fence line with it at the presant.
But once I get more/better used to it I will use it to mow ditches.
My ditch mower right now is a Husky AWD with a briggs engine. The recoil on the engine was crap and I had to make a crappy mod on it because I didn't want to have to carry my cordless drill in the truck to every job site.
Yes the banks are steep so I wear base ball cleats so I don't slip. OH also have the oil leval a tad over full.
Use a zip tie to hold the dead man switch down.
Use the cordless drill to start.
Under this pile of JB weld is a plastic washer that gives and won't hold the wings that pop out the spin the motor. The JB weld stiffens up that washer.
I suppose most people wouldn't start the mower in a year what I start it in a month. I do a lot of ditches for people.
The recoil is held on with pop rivets too. I drilled it out installed 1/4 20 one inch bolts. Found some flat washer things like used in the old days to hold brake drums on cars, used them to hold the bolts for the recoil. Worked great.
They will drive by while I am doing one and stop/turn around and ask if I could do theirs. Look at theirs and give them a quote. Haven't been told no yet.
One in the picture is around 150' long on the south of the drive and about 50' on the north I charge $30.00 to do it.
Al