Thread: Ride on Mower

Originally Posted by UncleHo

G'day Numpty

Ah Ha,! in that case what you need is a little grey?? Ferguson TE 20 or a TD20 with a 3/4ft slasher try Gillespies or JA Page
or look in Grass Roots Magazineor Trading Post

Ferguson T series, simple like a Landrover, go forever and a Southern Cross?? slasher will do most stuff, work happily for years and parts are still available,good turnibg circle and 3pt. linkage with enough power to run post hole diggers, small towed blade, and front & rear bucket, and there are heaps of them in the local area, just get Numpty's Missus to keep a lookout in the local area properties

Keith H might know of some as there are several rellies with properties.

cheers

Actually Ho, due to the fact as I said, that the rest of the acres are rough, a Grey Fergie (even though they are a lovely nostalgic implement), would be the last tractor I would choose. Flat ground, no problem. A bit like S1's, love them, but they're hardly practical.

I like the comments on zero turns, but if I need to tow a small trailer around or do work like that, I would think a garden tractor type would be better.

Keep in mind that a purpose built mower will only do just that, mow. If you find you need/want to perform other rural tasks then you will still need a tractor and attachments. Attachments such as a front, under, or rear blade for levelling and filling and spreading, disc plough for chopping up sticks, breaking up clods, and cultivation, diamond harrows for preparing your rough land for grass seeding, front or rear loader bucket, earth auger, sprayer, etc. Australian farmers have a fetish for tractor attachments and these can be found around swap meets, flea markets, clearing sales, and auctions. American farmers seem to be more machinery minded and tend to buy purpose built machines rather than waste time changing attachments over. Oz cockies are generally lousy and buy the cheapest, so come the plethora of attachments available.

Originally Posted by numpty

Actually Ho, due to the fact as I said, that the rest of the acres are rough, a Grey Fergie (even though they are a lovely nostalgic implement), would be the last tractor I would choose. Flat ground, no problem. A bit like S1's, love them, but they're hardly practical.

I like the comments on zero turns, but if I need to tow a small trailer around or do work like that, I would think a garden tractor type would be better.

There's no problem pulling a small trailer with a Zero turn, I have had a 6x4 behind the scag full of clippings after the fairway mower has cut up at the club house and it managed it no worries.

Other attachments I wouldnt be putting behind a lawn tractor anyway.

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

Keep in mind that a purpose built mower will only do just that, mow. If you find you need/want to perform other rural tasks then you will still need a tractor and attachments. Attachments such as a front, under, or rear blade for levelling and filling and spreading, disc plough for chopping up sticks, breaking up clods, and cultivation, diamond harrows for preparing your rough land for grass seeding, front or rear loader bucket, earth auger, sprayer, etc. Australian farmers have a fetish for tractor attachments and these can be found around swap meets, flea markets, clearing sales, and auctions. American farmers seem to be more machinery minded and tend to buy purpose built machines rather than waste time changing attachments over. Oz cockies are generally lousy and buy the cheapest, so come the plethora of attachments available.

Point taken, but it is not a farm we're buying, just some rural acres which has a pretty well maintained house acreage and........... "the rest"

Originally Posted by mcrover

Im not having a go at anyone here but I'll just clear up a couple of points that have been brought up.

The cone and disc set up is ok for small flat blocks and yes it does make for a cheaper mower but if they are run for a long time as in while cutting large areas they can over heat and wear away quite quickly.

Yes they are ralatively cheap to replace but as long as you keep the services up to a Hydraustatic system there is nothing to go wrong with it.

Nearly all of my mowers are Hyrdaustatic and I have only in 12 years replaced 3 Hydraustats in 3 different mowers all of which had done huge hrs, 1 of them had done aroung 13000 hrs.

As I said, dont go for the ones which have the wheelmotor and Hydro built into the alloy housing as they are a bit cheap and domestic and they are the ones that can cause problems.

Another point is the bar type blades are no problem with rough surfaces, roots, blocks of wood, bricks and star pickets.

The Scag at work mulch's star pickets into little bits and turns bricks to dust, I know this because our practice fairway is around 20 acres and is full of fill which has stuff sort of float to the surface all the time and the scag just mows it down.

The 325D Toro out front has swing back blades on bars that we use for cutting the finer type turf.

The Disk mowers that tank is talking about is more the slasher type disks with the swing back blades which they are designed to hit an object and swing the blade back and the object bounces off the disk to limit damage to the spindle.

They do work and is a must on LOW HP mowers as hitting an object like a tree root can instantly stop the spindle and possibly rip the spinlde shaft to pieces or break the centre bolt (if fitted).

Our fine turf is cut with large Cylinder mowers, not rotory's as they cut much better and our tee's are cut at 8mm as are the surrounds, fairways at 10mm and greens are currently at 2.6mm so I dont imagine a rotory ever getting to those sort of heights anyway.

We have 20 odd thousand trees at different stages of growth on the course so there are plenty of roots and branches that get cut by the rough mowers which by the way are cutting at 25mm and our rough is natural turf not manicured.

Hope that helps

mcrover, I cant see how you come to the conclusion that Cone and Disc are only for flat, small blocks and they wear out quickly.

Quote:"The cone and disc set up is ok for small flat blocks and yes it does make for a cheaper mower but if they are run for a long time as in while cutting large areas they can over heat and wear away quite quickly."

I have a 13hp Cox with disc and cone drive (4 years now), my block is just over 1 acre with parts of the mowed area with a slope of 3:1, the grass is in tufts and very dense, also thigh high Razor grass, vines and bracken, there are many fallen bits of branches, I only p/up anything over 25mm thick, they get chipped nicely. I also mow 2 of my neighbours yards, same size but much steeper overall.
The Drive Discs have no measurable wear and the cone has maybe worn about 3 mm in 4 years (with about 30mm+ more to go), adjustments with the supplied guages and tools takes less than 2 minutes, including getting and putting the tools away. The local Cox dealer reckons on average the Cone (only) will need replacing between every 6 to 10 years on average. My Cox has a large blade disc (like ordinary mowers) with the swingaway blades, it acts like a flywheel imparting a great deal of torque to the blades which makes it easy to cut through heavy scrub without stalling or dropping a drive belt. I have 4 blades fitted, normally 2, my neighbour recently bought a MTD mower with bar blades (2) and every time he hits a tuft of grass, razor grass or bracken it throws a belt and he spends more time refitting belts than mowing. I just lent him my Cox and he finished the job. I bought the Cox new and because of it's rugged build and simplicity, it does the job and it does it easily and quickly and I cant find any fault with the design, build and reliability, Regards Frank.

Originally Posted by Tank

mcrover, I cant see how you come to the conclusion that Cone and Disc are only for flat, small blocks and they wear out quickly.

.

To answer your question, I can say that because for the last 12 years I have been working on commertial mowers on golf courses, for councils and sporting ovals etc and anytime Ive come across one with cone type drive thats had to do a reasonable amount of work (as I stated in my post) they crap them selves quickly.

Im glad you read your brocher inside out and spoke to the bloke you bought it from to get such an unbiast veiw of the whole thing before you burned me with your post.

The bloke next door has a little cox mower that I just had the pleasure of ordering a new carbi for and this thing has never done any real work for the last 6 years until it got burned in a garage fire and has just been resurected but the cone has near to no adjustment left on it at all.

The thing that is more disturbing is that you tried saying that Hydro machines are unreliable and expensive to repair, well I would like to see a Cone and disk drive system on anything abouve 15hp which is their working limit which again is lower than what Numpty has asked for.

Also the cone type transmission has nothing at all to do with cutting performance as the blades are run of a separate pulley system which is before the transmission and as far as your solid axel rear goes, it just means that if you turn on a wet surface then you are either likely to tear up the turf or go in a straight line due to no differentiating between the 2 rear wheels.

That also makes them not real good for around trees and stuff as they just make a mess.

Im not saying the Cox would be bad for what your using it for, obviously it is exactly doing what you want and is fine for how you use it.

Numpty asked basically for something around the 20hp+ range for a 5 acre semi hilled block.

Nothing was said about tree's, roots, braken, holes, undulations etc etc etc so seems that was the case I stated my opinion based on what he asked for.

As far as the disk type blade goes, I agreed with you to a certain point other than If the machine has enough HP the the tip speed will be great enough to mulch stuff and not stop the blade unlike something with lower HP.

Tank I think we are just on 2 different wave lengths, Im talking about going more toward the commertial style machine and your leaning toward the domestic, it's not fair to try and face them off against each other as they are there for 2 different jobs.

By the way if anyone is interested I just noticed in reading my post quoted that I said that the rough is cut at 25mm, I meant to write 2.5" instead.

Have you considered one of those tow behind powered slashers that you can pull behind a 4 wheeler.

They are about $3k and they only need to drive the spindles and you use a ute or 4 wheeler to drag it around.

Mowers

Originally Posted by Numpty's Missus

Probably not suitable for the type of use we need.

Ok