There are manual reel mowers. Then again there are other reel mowers. A good one is scarce and far easier to use than many that are almost junk in comparison. The best by far would now be older in my opinion.

As for gas powered lawn stuff I just weight the cost per year has been and decide if it is worth doing more maintenance on it. Usually there are many things on them that are on their way out after ten years or so. Tires are rotting etc.

If one of our lawn tractors dies now it has cost 40.00 per operational amortized year if we call it junk now.

The other one would be in the 50-60 per year range at this point but other than needing a new deck belt and getting a little steering play is still in good shape.

Logically it would be better to sell off the cheaper one as it is still quite usable whille there is still some value left in it. We have pretty large lawn areas to cut as well. Not really that large but each lot is one acre. Both have elevation issues and are not like cutting a billiard table.

My prefferance is to run heavy duty 40 to fifty oil in the lawn tractors air cooled engines. I have never observed one of my engines getting tired over time with this approach. This with many lawn tractors involved over the years as well.

I did have a struggle to find straight 40 grade and 50 grade this fall for the pre storage oil changes. It seems to have been removed from the shelves of all the normal local sources. So since I will use nothing else I will have to locate some.