Hi Jeff,
I guess you've hit the nail on the head why the Diplomat style SB's became a failure from an after sales point of view.
Sadly the drive gear was the part that always failed and replacing that component of the machine was obviously painful to some folks, but when the parts issue dried up on those gears then that relegated these machines to the hard rubbish collection.
There was a short run of metal gears made which solved the issue permanently for each machine that had it fitted but they sold out in no time and were never made again.
If someone invested and had them re-manufactured I'm sure they'd make some easy money, especially in this current Scott Bonnar climate where everything with the SB name on it seems to be a must have item. The last of those metal gears sold for around $200~$300 many years ago and that made it an expensive investment to keep a mower going, thus most went to mower heaven.
Generally speaking they were quite a good concept with the catcher being behind opposed to out the front getting smacked and restricting tight movement, but the market has spoken I guess.
Cheers,
BB.
