HF: ADULT beverage while operating equipment??? Oh my no, never, uhhhhh not me. It's illegal to drink and drive you know. And besides, I'd never want to spill an adult beverage. 8<)
Bob: The modification is nothing glamorous. Just an old farm boy "field fix" as we used to say in the Army.
The problem I encountered was that the return spring got hang up on the tow-mode stabilizer (or whatever they call that piece of metal that keeps the unit stable in travel mode). Once the spring was hung up, it would stretch out of shape when the cutter head encountered a post and would not completely return to the correct operating position. It tended to sort of drag along behind at an oblique angle instead of 90 degrees to the direction of travel.
To fix the problem I looked around the shop for whatever I had on hand and found a piece of 1 1/2" Schedule 80 PVC. I cut off a piece long enough to enclose the spring and keep it from getting hung up on the stabilizer. Basically a sleeve over the spring.
Then, I put a QuickLink on each end of the spring and fastened them to the original locations. I piddled around with a bunji cord to get the PVC spring sleeve out of the way when I towed the unit, but that was more trouble than it was worth. So, I put a QuickSnap onto the QuickLink and now when I'm finished trimming, I simply unsnap the spring, pull off the sleeve, put the unit into travel mode and stow the sleeve on the upright stabilizer bar (I knew it was good for something).
My next improvement will be to put on something like sway chains or rods to keep the unit aligned with the direction of travel of the lawn tractor and thereby reduce or eliminate the tendency to slip. My thought is to put on something like I use on my rotary cutter to keep it level and straight.
I'll post some pictures of my modification. Wish there was a way to put them all with this message, but I don't know how to do that.
Hope they pics are useful.
Later,
Ed