Lowe's John Deer 3800 4000 psi 13HP Pressure Washer

Lowe's recently featured a new John Deer Pressure Washer that sold for under $1000. While most of this unit is put together well, featuring the reliable 13HP Honda motor and a good cart assembly, I was surpriced to see that John Deer would agree to put this new miniture AR pump on their unit. In the "race to the bottom" in pricing while still trying to feature big PSI numbers, this new Annovi Reverberi pump has been offered up to the consumer market. With a rating of 4000PSI, many commercial customers have put a little too much trust in the John Deer name, and have bought a unit they thought suitable for hard use.

I have recently seen problems with these units that is normally uncommon for "crankshaft" type pumps. Appearantly, AR has bowed to Lowe's (and their consumers) demand for cheapness and has finally come up with a design that is prone to catastraphic failure. You'll hear it if it "goes". Otherwise, if you're use is not too heavy, and you keep a clean, high grade oil in the pump crankcase, you'll find that first the valves, and then the water and oil seals will fail within a few years. If you have lost most of your pressure and your crankcase oil doesn't "milk-up" with water too quickly, (some is inevitable and okay), you might just get your pressure back by replacing the valves. Valve pressure loss occurs gradually, while sudden pressure loss is most often caused by the pressure unloader mechanism.(Under the adjustment handle)