Just picked up a new...

[xlr82v2]

Tiller!

Got the 6' KK tiller for my Mahindra 3525. I looked this one over pretty good before I decided to take it home... all the welds look good, and even the paint doesn't look too bad, except a few spots that are worn off from the shipping "crate". They might have used a mop to paint it with, but I'd rather have a little too much paint than not enough .

I had to shorten the PTO shaft by 1 1/2 inches, but other than that, setup was easy and straightforward. Got it all serviced and ready to go, except unfortunately it's way to muddy to do anything with it yet around here. Hopefully in the next week or 2, it will warm up enough and dry out enough to get the garden going! Got to have my home grown tomata's!!!

 

[Farmwithjunk]

You'll be more than happy with your purchase. I've owned one for 7 years, tilled quite a few acres. I managed to wear out a set of tines and I'm working on wearing out a second set with NO mechanical issues. They do a spledid job.

 

[xlr82v2]

Yep... as soon as I saw one of these tillers years ago, I knew just by looking at them that they were a pretty good deal, and reading the reviews of them here on TBN confirmed that. But I only had my 8N back then... and even trying to use a tiller with an N is almost pointless.

My wife and I've been working our garden with an old TroyBilt Horse... last year I dumped some money into it and replaced the tines, tires, and the engine. Made it a new machine. But, we also doubled the size of our garden... which is now about 100'x100' large now. It took nearly 4 hours to work the garden over just 1 time with the TroyBilt. I figure with this tiller, I might be able to go over it twice in 1 hour. Good to know when you're trying to get stuff in the ground before the rains come.

I'll get some pics of it in action whenever we finally dry out... maybe I can get the wife to star in a few photos...

 

[xlr82v2]

Just messing around with some video... but here's something that might interest some of you guys...

Here's the tines spinning at 540 rpm PTO speed... They're spinning pretty good under there! CHOPPY CHOPPY!! Faster than I expected, faster than Dad's old 4' JD tiller.

 

[xlr82v2]

Well, the garden finally dried out enough on Wednesday to try out the new KK tiller... At one side of the garden, the moisture level was nearly perfect to work the ground... at the other side, it was a little wet yet... so I figured that it was a good enough time to test out the tiller, on both "ready to work" soil, and also on soil that was "just a bit too wet".

The tiller performed very well, as good or better than I expected it would, especially in the "wet" areas of the garden. I also tilled 2 passes of virgin sod on one end of the garden as well, just to see how it performed on sod also. I'm very pleased! It took me roughly 40 minutes to go over the entire garden 1 time. That's a lot better than the 4+ hours it takes with the TroyBilt Horse!!!

As far as a 6' tiller on a 27 PTO HP tractor (35 engine hp), my Mahindra 3525 handled it just fine. When I put the tiller in the ground, the tractor definitely knew it was back there, but it had ample power to run the tiller. I was not wanting for more horsepower. I wouldn't recommend the 6' for much smaller of a tractor, especially if you're going to be tilling sod or similar, but 27 PTO HP runs it just fine. One thing though, I had to tighten the slip clutch from the owner's manual's "recommended" setting. In the previously worked part of the garden, it worked just fine, and did not slip. But when I started tilling the sod, that was just too much load for it at the "recommended" setting, and it began to slip. So, I tightened all 8 bolts/springs on the clutch by 1 more turn, and tried it again. No slippage, the clutch was cool to the touch when I finished the 2 swaths on the virgin sod. 1 more pass over the freshly tilled sod, and it was tilled up as fine as the rest of the garden.

So, to echo so many others here on TBN, the KK gear drive tiller is a keeper!

Here's a couple of pics...