Andy Mac
30th October 2010, 06:39 PM
Hello there,
Just thought I'd share a win I had today, with my ride-on mower. It's a Victa with a 41" dual cutter deck and has always been a pretty ordinary machine. In any thing other than short grass it would play up: the cut grass built-up very quickly, jam the blades which would cause the belt to slip and me to stop the machine to clear it. And of course wore out out the odd V-belt. Progress was always slow, and I learned to edge slowly into long grass, wait for rpm to rise again etc etc, or run over the lot first with the whipper snipper. A right PITA:((. I put it down to a poorly designed belt system (which seems unduly complicated and prone to slippage), and maybe the thing is meant to do a cosmetic job on already manicured lawns ie. suburban ones
Anyway, I realised the build up of grass always happened at the far end of each blade, and jammed the stuff against the guard of the deck, where the clearance is about 10-15mm. So today I had enough, dropped the whole deck and turned it upside down and reached for the angle grinder. I cut the end of each blade at an angle, leaving the cutting face intact and tapered it by about 6mm. I thought of it as the relief grind on a drill bit, or lathe tool.
The difference is AMAZING!! It's like a whole new bloody machine! I can now drive into long grass and it does what I always expected a ride-on to do!!:- Makes me wonder why blades aren't produced like that, from the manufacturer?! I'll definitely do this mod on any blade I buy in future.
Maybe this will help someone else.
Cheers
Just thought I'd share a win I had today, with my ride-on mower. It's a Victa with a 41" dual cutter deck and has always been a pretty ordinary machine. In any thing other than short grass it would play up: the cut grass built-up very quickly, jam the blades which would cause the belt to slip and me to stop the machine to clear it. And of course wore out out the odd V-belt. Progress was always slow, and I learned to edge slowly into long grass, wait for rpm to rise again etc etc, or run over the lot first with the whipper snipper. A right PITA:((. I put it down to a poorly designed belt system (which seems unduly complicated and prone to slippage), and maybe the thing is meant to do a cosmetic job on already manicured lawns ie. suburban ones
Anyway, I realised the build up of grass always happened at the far end of each blade, and jammed the stuff against the guard of the deck, where the clearance is about 10-15mm. So today I had enough, dropped the whole deck and turned it upside down and reached for the angle grinder. I cut the end of each blade at an angle, leaving the cutting face intact and tapered it by about 6mm. I thought of it as the relief grind on a drill bit, or lathe tool.
The difference is AMAZING!! It's like a whole new bloody machine! I can now drive into long grass and it does what I always expected a ride-on to do!!:- Makes me wonder why blades aren't produced like that, from the manufacturer?! I'll definitely do this mod on any blade I buy in future.
Maybe this will help someone else.
Cheers