I have just recently come into a Snapper Pro zero turn mower.
Drive belts were oil soaked and I believe that was enough to stop the hydraulic pumps from doing their job. No forwarded/reverse movement at all. Machine appears to try, but won’t do it.
So a thorough cleaning and replacing of the belts is on the list.

The question is this - when this happened the machine was towed from the front yard to the back. I presume the engine was off. What damage was done to the pumps or hydraulic motors?

I am familiar with the pump “valve” bolts that are used to allow towing. I used those to allow me to pull it on to the trailer. They worked perfectly.

In this case it may have been towed 100 yards across grass without the valve bolts being backed out.

I am new to zero turns myself as I just got one that I am refurbing.
So I have been reading everything I can as of late.

Here is what I found earlier about towing without bypassing the transmission.

quote:

The trouble with towing is you are working the system backwards.
This in itself is not all that big a problem as the pump & wheel motors are basically the same units although the oil ways will be out of time.
The problem is to go backwards the input pulley needs to be able to move freely, which it can't because it can not turn over the engine backwards.
This causes very high oil pressures which will get relieved by leakage between the valve chest & the valve plate.
There is no seal there so oil being forced between the two faces will damage the faces and then when trying to operate as normal, you will get excessive leakage .

Looking forward to hearing others input on this.

So far on this Johnn Deere I got just did a tune up, new blades, and replaced the steering stabilizers.

Belts are showing some wear and has a small hum when when the blades are engaged.
I greased the pulleys I could find with fittings. Hopefully that will get me through the summer.

When fall hits and temps drop I plan on replacing the belts, pulleys, spindles, and removing the hydrostatic transmissions and changing the fluid even though JD says its lifetime fluid.