I've recounted the tale of my cheap mower before, but what the heck. It's a 19sumthinsumthin Montgomery Ward (MTD, like everything else) that I bought for $75 around 1993, put a set of tires and blades on it, replaced the battery and rednecked the paint job, figure another $125 for that. I ran it like that until 2003 when the motor blew up (bypassing the governor might have had something to do with that) and bought a John Deere with a rotten deck for $100, swiped the motor and sold the rest as scrap for ~$20. I also put a set of belts on it (~$45) and had to replace the deck bearings (~$50). So I have maybe $600 in it all told (I'm adding one other battery and changing the oil intermittently) and for almost 20 years I have run the snot out of it. Still going strong and my kid has learned to drive it. 
Oh yeah, it does have flexi flyer steering but that's because I hit stuff with it and bend/break things. I just pound it back together and keep going.
Grizz
Dork
4/20/12 8:19 a.m.
We had a pretty nasty hill at the place I grew up, used to use a Cub Cadet(Made before they sucked) and it never had any issues other than careening wildly out of control down the hill if it was wet.
After it finally went kaput my mom bought some 1400 dollar POS from Sears that ran like E36 M3 right off the bat and lasted a year tops. Then she moved on to a rebuilt "self propelled" push mower, only the drive was spinning the fronts so you still had to do all the pushing. Just like with cars, fwd mowers aren't that great, but rwd ones are awesome. After that one we got a used Husqvarna rear drive with a Honda engine = BEST THING EVAR. Made that hill a piece of cake.
Hell, my sister hasn't even been able to kill it, she just did 125 bucks worth of damage and made it hard to start and run poorly after starting. Which is actually a glowing review considering how quickly they break things.
Believe it ot not, my Craftsman mower is 24 years old.
Runs like a charm.
Out side of routine maintenance. no problems.
It probably doesn't have as many hours as the age may indicate since I have a small lawn. takes me 20 minutes.
