Good Lawn Mowers

Did y'all post to the wrong group? This is rec.crafts.metalworking, here we just weld or pop rivet patches on the holes in our mower decks and keep on going...

Don't know if you can find one, but Gravely makes a line of commercial mowers. Quality like you used to expect. I have three commercial 12s, one with a 52" deck. I've never paid more than $1200 for a unit and normally got a lot of other attachments.

Karl

I have a HR215 HXA Honda. It has a hydrostatic transmission. You start it and then engage the blade. About 20 years old. I'll bet anyone who shows up with a hundred dollar bill that it will start on the first pull. Cost about $900 then. Now about $1200.

Like Pete says, this one has a patch riveted over the hole worn through by scrubbing the flowerbed curb.

Well, after I toss the rest of the mower I'm going to keep the engine for aluminum casting stock -- does that count?

Besides, y'all are a smart group, and likely to select a mower for it's ability to manfully cling to side hill, not 'cause it's a pretty shade of green, or because you liked the sales guy's long lashes as he explained the self-start feature.

If I _liked_ the existing mower I'd do that. We bought it 18 years ago when we had a dead flat suburban back yard to mow; now I have a hillside that's (a) bigger and (b, snivel, whine) steep.

You have the wrong solution to the problem.

Rather than replacing the lawn mower, replace the lawn with something like ice plant. It takes very little water, it chokes out all the weeds and you can spend your time doing something other than yard work!

As the young folks say, w00t!

--Winston

Well, your could take your "narrow-tread tractor" and add wheels to the rear, making it a dually. Just have to make some spacers -- good metal project.

Well, I aint got no stinking lawn, but I got a mower. 33 HP John Deere Diesel with a King Kutter stump jumper. I reckon it ain't gonna pretty-efiy yer lawn, but it will cut just about anything. Even a contractor grade rubber water hose somebody left out front before the brush got to thick to find it. I gotta admit it did bog down a little when it found the garden hose for me. But it kept going. The next pass for the rest of the hose also found a 6" fallen branch laying over it, and now I know what real world use there is for field grade bolts. They use a grade 2 field bolt as a shear pin at the input portion of the drive assembly on the stump jumper.

After I put in s stock of field grade bolts I experiemented a little. It would chop up that log or the hose just fine, but sucking up both at once was just too much for it.

So, yeah some of us select our mowers for toughness and longevity... AND there is even some metal content in my post. So there.

Bob La Londe

Kind of depends on what you consider a significant amount of grass. My neighbor lent me a zero turn walk behind mower with a 60 inch deck and a 18 hp engine. I don't have much in the way of hills, but I think it would do as well as anything on slopes. I would not want to cut more than four or five acres with it. More than that and I want to ride. Look on Craigslist and Ebay for zero turn mowers. I believe the one he lent me was an Exmark. But no bag. Not too many of the commercial mowers have bags, but there are some.

Dan

I forgot to mention that I saw a commercial mower today with a mower deck that was in two parts and hinged so each half followed the ground. I did not notice if it was a walk behind or a rider.

Dan

Get a pair of sheep - low maintenance, automatic height adjustment, auto steering, recycles grass to motive fuel, conversational ability on par with most wingers, and you can eat them if they start plotting against you....

Andrew VK3BFA.

Like one of the other guys (was it Karl?) said, an old 12 HP Gravely walk behind would work. I used to mow some pretty steep slopes with one of those. I had dual wheels on each side and a 40" deck. If the steering brake isn't worn out, it works ok. The newer solution probably would be a walk behind zero turn mower. The old Gravelys were all gear driven with a differential between the two big drive wheels. Once you had the dual wheels and anything wider than the 30" mower on them, you really needed the steering brake attachment to make them easier to use. Actually the old original 8 HP Gravelys with the

30" deck may do the job for you without dual wheels and they're very maneuverable without a steering brake. Now I use a Grasshopper zero turn for my 4A. The Gravely's been retired to winter snow blowing.

RWL

True enough.

Whenever a Liberal utters the term "Common Sense approach"....grab your wallet, your ass, and your guns because the sombitch is about to do something damned nasty to all three of them.

On Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:34:22 -0700, the infamous Winston scrawled the following:

FOUR GRAND for a Jewish lawnmower? Pass.

-- If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. -- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Actually, the ones back in the 40s were 5 HP. Then to 6.6 HP, then to

7.6 HP in the late 60s. No changes in displacement though - just cams and carburetors and compression - with a good dose of marketing hype - so the torque was all about the same and most people notice little if any difference in power. These were the Gravely T head engines, with pressure oiling - good on hills.

Dual or even triple wheels, or axle extensions, would be a real plus on steep slopes.

The 30" decks are the heavy bush hogs which aren't the greatest for finish mowing, but there are larger decks with multiple spindles which give great cuts. Or reel mowers, single or gang.

John Martin

Or make new stainless steel decks to keep40 year old mowers going for another 25 or so.

For steep lawns nothing beats an old 2 stroke commercial Lawn Boy. They stink, but lubrication is not an issue. I know guys that tie ropes on them and pull them up and down banks you can hardly stand/walk on.

Look at it this way, My little robot vaccuum cleaner keeps the floor nice and shiny. I don't have to do anything but push the button and lift extension cords out of its way. (OK and empty the bin when finished.)

It doesn't steal stuff and so far, it costs me 82c a day (and falling).

I could enlist the help of an onboard supervisor and through the magic of camouflage, barely tell when he is doing his job:

(OK, not really my cat.)

--Winston