Add a ZD to a BX2350 setup?

[leonz]

If you trade in the MMM or sell it out right you will save a lot of money buying a NEW FLAIL MOWER or buying a used one from a dealer or a farm auction or tractorhouse.

you might burn a gallon of disel fuel mowing your property as the rear mount flail mower requires so much less energy- it is much more efficient as it operates at a lower speed and the rotor is operating at a much faster speed with higher torque.

When I use our flail mower I burn a gallon in the wheel horse and a gallon in the lawn genie for three acres- the tractor runs withh no attachments operating which reduces the amount of fuel consumed and the flail mower runs flat out with no restrictions and the lawn is cut to finish quality with out overlapping.

The flail mower also chops the leaves, sticks and branches up as well with no issues


Just to deflate the issues with price about rearmounted flail finish mowers and provide an excellent example of Italian machinery offered for sale in the USA


I am not attempting to advertise these mowers for sale:


The 49 inch Caroni flail mower from agrisupply.com is 1731.95 delivered to your door

The 59 inch Caroni flail mower from www.agrisupply.com is $1,789.95 USD delivered to your door.


The 73 inch Caroni flail mower from www.agrisupply.com is $2,097.95 USD delvered

They have parts always in stock and these are todays prices from the agrisupply home page.
and these mowers afre built with the european mowing market in mind which involves much mowing
of rows in vineyards and lots of slopes.

Like I said a flail mower will cost less money to own and operate and it will last longer than MMM


Disclaimer: I do not represent Caroni, Agrisupply, Landpride or Kubota etc.

I am lazy and I will admit it, and I dont like MMM's to begin with because they are a lot of work and throw objects
where a flail mower will not do that and cannot because of the simpler design, and a flail mower does not require
cleaning as the blades lift and carry the grass and throw it back down and the occasional use of a garden hose
with cold water or hot water if you have it.

The flail mower knives are reversible and easy to flip which lets you use the blades for along time before
flipping them and using the other knife edge.


Sharpening flail mower blades is easy to- if you have a belt sander that is floor mounted is the easiest way to do it to get a
great edge on the knife blade even if it is caked with grass fines on the blade.

leon

 

[Bigkrank]

Buy a ZD and never look back, you'll wonder why you waited so long.

 

[_RaT_]

If you trade in the MMM or sell it out right you will save a lot of money buying a NEW FLAIL MOWER or buying a used one from a dealer or a farm auction or tractorhouse.

you might burn a gallon of disel fuel mowing your property as the rear mount flail mower requires so much less energy- it is much more efficient as it operates at a lower speed and the rotor is operating at a much faster speed with higher torque.

When I use our flail mower I burn a gallon in the wheel horse and a gallon in the lawn genie for three acres- the tractor runs withh no attachments operating which reduces the amount of fuel consumed and the flail mower runs flat out with no restrictions and the lawn is cut to finish quality with out overlapping.

The flail mower also chops the leaves, sticks and branches up as well with no issues


Just to deflate the issues with price about rearmounted flail finish mowers and provide an excellent example of Italian machinery offered for sale in the USA


I am not attempting to advertise these mowers for sale:


The 49 inch Caroni flail mower from agrisupply.com is 1731.95 delivered to your door

The 59 inch Caroni flail mower from www.agrisupply.com is $1,789.95 USD delivered to your door.


The 73 inch Caroni flail mower from www.agrisupply.com is $2,097.95 USD delvered

They have parts always in stock and these are todays prices from the agrisupply home page.
and these mowers afre built with the european mowing market in mind which involves much mowing
of rows in vineyards and lots of slopes.

Like I said a flail mower will cost less money to own and operate and it will last longer than MMM


Disclaimer: I do not represent Caroni, Agrisupply, Landpride or Kubota etc.

I am lazy and I will admit it, and I dont like MMM's to begin with because they are a lot of work and throw objects
where a flail mower will not do that and cannot because of the simpler design, and a flail mower does not require
cleaning as the blades lift and carry the grass and throw it back down and the occasional use of a garden hose
with cold water or hot water if you have it.

The flail mower knives are reversible and easy to flip which lets you use the blades for along time before
flipping them and using the other knife edge.


Sharpening flail mower blades is easy to- if you have a belt sander that is floor mounted is the easiest way to do it to get a
great edge on the knife blade even if it is caked with grass fines on the blade.

leon

I'm confused. When you run your rear PTO, you still have to run the engine at PTO RPM (about 2600-2700 RPM) whether it is mid mount or rear mount. Did I miss something?

I like flail mowers for fields but if you are cutting lawn, it just simply will not match a blade.

 

[leonz]

No!, your mid PTO is hightailing it at 1000 rpm to the gearbox and then the belt drive to create the high blade tip speed to cut the grass. any mower can have a high blade tip speed but cutting grass is another issue by its self.

if you have a flail mower and a MMM and mow the same area the flail cuts and lifts the grass over the rotor versus the MMM tearing the blades of grass.

The MMM blades are also designed to create suction lift to throw the cut grass to the side of the mower for discharge and that is why you have all the compacted grass under the deck and you can never tell until its to late if a MMM suctions up an object and bangs it around until it either throws it or it falls back down as the mower advances.


your rear pto is running at 540 rpm period and the rotor is running faster through speed increases via the belt drive from the cross shaft and gear box
and as the flail mower has a balanced rotor it will spin at high speeds which will create greater efficiencies in mowing allowing you to mow quickly and chop finely with ease and not simply spit grass out the side.

And flail mowers cut lawn better than mid mounts, the grass blade tip is in better conditon, leaves no scalping marks, and leave very little grass as it is finely chopped by the GRASS mower "knives". within the narrow section the blades sets occupy across the width of the flail rotor.


And as I mentioned fuel savings previously its a win win versus a MMM.


the rear anti scalping roller also avoids issues of digging in low spots or a tire with low air pressure affecting the flail mower.

many flail mowers have a front anti scapling roller to allow the flail mower to easily traverse obstacles like curbing to avoid damaging the knives and knife hangers.

 

[_RaT_]

Yeah that's my confusion, why is there a fuel savings? Engine RPM is the same with either mower. I use a 72" flail mower but for reasons far different. It has to do with the ability to strike unseen obstacles and not destroy the mower. It has a PTO clutch plus 4 parallel belts to help absorb the shock of a relatively small overall diameter of the outside tip of the blade to the center of the shaft. It certainly has its benefits. My 84" 3 bladed rear discharge finish mower had a much nicer cut. I had medium lift blades, it was an option to have high or low lift as well.

Remember, the tip of most blades is under the speed of sound but not by a huge amount. The larger the diameter, the slower the the RPM in order to keep that tip under the speed of sound. Whether its a flail mower or a 84" brush mower, the speed must be kept under the speed of sound.

 

[leonz]

the rotor carrying the knives is a flywheel essentially and the knive blades cutting length is much longer in "total cutting width" than a side discharge mowers individual blades cutting surfaces.

Thats why I can mow the acreage I have quickly by allowing it to be cut and dumped and then I can come back and pick it back up with the same mower in even less time.


Every row of knives overlaps every other row of knives to cut the blades of grass with the least amount of resistance and cutting width which creates a smaller area to be cut by the following blade knives.

you can mow in a higher gear and keep the PTO at 540 and cover more square feet per minute with a greater length of cutting edges in total.


The rotor on our lawn genie has four rows of double knives and a dethacting overseeding blade and the end blades are single knives pointing inward and I beleive the knives are two inches long and the rotor carries 4 rows of knives and 72 or 76 knives I think in total- not including the overseeding/thatching blades, I dont remember exactly, and the cutting surfaces would be at least 144 inches.

 

[jhoward000]

In response to the original question, I found myself in the same dilemma a couple of years ago. This will be a long story, but I went through this exact same decision process.

I bought a BX2200 (fantastic tractor) in 2003 to do a little bit of everything, including light FEL work, light bushhogging, etc., but mostly to mow my lawn. I live on a 62 acre farm, so there are always small chores for which our big 70hp tractor isn't as well suited. However, over time I found myself not utilizing the little BX for anything but mowing during the mowing season (long here in the south) mostly because it was such a pain to remove the Kubota bagger. I also use Pat's easy change, so it also meant taking them off/on, etc. Also, I found myself needing a backhoe more often and even bought a used one for the big 70hp, but it just wasn't that useful - too big for many places I needed it.

Anyway, I started noodling potential solutions a couple of years ago, none of which really seemed all that cost effective, but finally concluded I really needed two machines rather than my single do-it-all BX. At first, I thought I'd just add a zero-turn to the fleet for mowing, so I could dedicate the BX to all the other varioius chores. I figured I could add a Woods backhoe to solve my backhoe need. Well, as I was looking at mowers, still noodling over options, etc. I also started thinking that if I was going to dedicate my BX to being a tractor only, it sure would be nice if it were slightly bigger (B-series).

Well, here is the route I ended up taking: Last summer, I heavily researched zero-turns and settled on a Deere Z850a (31hp Kawasaki). This is despite the fact that I have 3 other Kubota products that have been terrific (two tractors and an RTV used on our farm). I also bought Deere's dump-from-seat hopper-style bagger a few weeks later (expensive). In fact this dump bagger was a big factor in my decision because my Bermuda lawn is so incredibly thick that I have never been able to successfully avoid bagging it during most of the summer. Overall, the Deere is a great mower and the bagger works quite well. You can cut as fast as you want in fairly thick grass, and it will not clog. However, after using this set-up last summer and so far this Spring, I was becoming more and more displeased with a few things:

1) The Kawasaki engine is just ridiculously loud. It may be that I'm spoiled with all the smooth diesels I have, but Deere has nothing in place to help mask the noise from the engine (no hood or cover at all). The addition of the hopper bagger only made it worse because its mounting position reflects the noise toward the operator.

2) The bagger mounts very far back and the tail-swing really hampers maneuverability. I damaged our fence in two places and took the bark off several trees. The mower with bagger is very long overall.

3) As well as the bagger performs (no clogs, easy dumping), it has one very annoying design flaw: The "dumping rods" are routed through the actual body of the bagger, leaving open slots on each side of the bagger body. Grass clippings fly out of these openings like crazy until the bagger is approximately half full. Any time I reverse or turn, I get covered in clippings.

To make a long story short, I recently happened upon a slightly used Kubota ZD326 (only 34 hours) for sale and was able to get it at a good price. I love the suspension seat, hydraulic deck lift, overall smoothness, and smooth diesel engine. Also, Kubota now offers a hopper-style dump-from-seat bagger and they seem to be promoting it pretty heavily with their dealers (also expensive). I ordered one of the baggers and am hoping I am as pleased with the bagger's performance as I am with the mower's so far. My Deere is now for sale on my Kubota dealer's lot.

I have some pdf files with info and good pictures of this Kubota bagger if anyone is interested. I should have mine in a week or so. I'm very eager to see how it works. I loved being able to just back up and dump the Deere bagger!

The main worry I have is that I hope I don't have to slow way down with it, as I did with the bagger I had on my BX2200. As mentioned above, the Deere was great in this regard. If anyone has experience with Kubota zero-turn baggers, I'd love to hear it. The Deere has an 8" chute going from the deck to the bagger, whereas the Kubota's is only 6". This is one reason I'm a little worried. It would be a shame to lose much of the speed benefit of a ZTR because of a slow bagger. Otherwise, the Kubota bagger looks very well designed in the pictures and appears easier to remove.

The Kubota bagger also extends backwards much less than the one on my Deere (looks to be about half as far just looking at the pictures). This will be a huge benefit in terms of maneuverability.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot - this past fall, I went ahead and traded my BX for a new Kubota B2920 with FEL and Backhoe. Best thing I ever did. This tractor is perfect for my needs. It's still small enough to get where I need it, but is considerably more capable than my BX in terms of traction, ground clearance, FEL lift, etc.

Other than the increased investment by going from a BX to a B, I didn't take too much of a financial hit with all of this. The BX held its value amazingly well, the two slightly used ZTRs were almost a wash, and selling the used backhoe I had acquired for the big 70hp tractor covered much of the extra cost of the B-series backhoe.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but I thought others may be interested in my experience with the Deere and bagger, as well as the overall fact that sometimes you just need multiple machines depending on your individual situation.

 

[keyman1808]

Jhoward I would love to see something on that bagger.

 

[sdirge]

Thanks everyone for the replies,

I am going to go with the ZD, after some research I think in a couple of years I am going to switch the tractor to a B or L series for more power.

Im still scratching my head on the dethatcher/rock removal, I would love to get rid of the front rotary broom, I do more damage with it than good to the grass. I tried a landscape rake to pull the gravel out of the grass but it kind of fluffs it up but does not drag it out.

 

[jhoward000]

Attached is a pdf file with some pictures and other details on the Kubota dump bagger. Hopefully this will work and everyone can access the file okay.