SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20181001-456BB-2147385252. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Matched catalog product: Cub Cadet Lawn Tractor Cub Cadet Hydrostatic Lawn Tractor LTX 1045. Source model text: Cub LTX 1050 50" 22 V Hydro. Incident: I just got finished with my weekly mowing my acre of property. Turned mower off and lifted hood to cool off as I always do before putting it back in the garage. I left it sitting in the driveway and decided to finish edging with the weed eater and blow off clippings with the blower. When I was all done with that I decided to take the riding mower again across my back yard with the deck in the highest position to "sweep" the clippings left from mowing earlier, down to back of my property to make the yard look nicer, instead of leaving rows of cut grass. This is typically what I do since I like the lawn to look 'clean' when I am finished. I got about 3/4 of the way done 'sweeping' the clippings and started to smell something burning. Thought is was a neighbor burning stuff. Then I noticed smoke out the the right side of the engine and then sudden a lot of smoke. Suddenly the mower quit running and stopped. The smoke increased rapidly. I get scared and jumped off. I walked away from it a few yards and when I turned around there were flames under the engine. By the time ran to get the hose pulled out and to where the mower was it was totally engulfed into an inferno.