ck20hst and brush hog size.

[rapracing]

Looks like I have decided on a ck20hst. Should get it later this week. I have a question about brush hog size. Will this handle a 5ft. The reason I ask is I a getting the industrial tires and that make it about 53-54" wide. The 4 ft will be a little narrow.

 

[Bob_Skurka]

Bush hogs are PTO powered devices, you have to live with the limits of the available PTO hp. Generally for heavy duty bush hogs, you would want about 5pto HP per 12" of width. For light/medium duty, you can live with about 4pto HP per 12" of width, perhaps a bit less. While the CK20 is a robust tractor, it is hampered by the available PTO hp for this specific task, I would suggest you are limited to a 48" bush hog.

 

[depratt_equip]

You could put a 52" cutter on it no problem. We have may customers with this size. Kioti makes a 52" and you might find some others do too. We do have quite a few LB1914 owners using a 5 ft with no problem, but that tractor is a tad bit more HP at the PTO. Keeping in mind that all our users are just mowing light to medium material. Nothing very heavy. So you could get away with a 60" on your CK depending on the material that you are cutting. Kioti list the 52" and 60" cutters fitting on the CK20HST on their website.

 

[getut]

I use a 5' with my CK20HST. It works great actually although I would not try it with a geared model. With the hydro I can vary my speed to match the conditions. I would say 90% of the time my tractor pulls the 5ft cutter with no problems. If I shoulder high thick stuff it does start to bog the tractor, I can slow down to a creep.

The 90% of the time I get the benefit of a 5ft cutter and use the tractor flat out, the other 10% of the time I just slow down to where it needs to be. I have used it to get blackberry and honeysuckles out of an old pasture that was 15ft-20ft high in places.

 

[KiotiJohn]

I'm going to go with getut's comments although I have a 48", I know that unless I were to be working in really thick stuff, I could use a 60" mower for most times.

The only thing that might make me think otherwise would be if I had to work a lot of hilly areas where a heavy 5' mower might be a safety issue, i.e. a lot of weight pulling the tractor sideways. Of course, one should be working up and down a hill, not sideways, but turning can be tricky if the mower is very heavy on a lighter framed tractor.

I think you could use the 5' well most of the time.
John

 

[DirtHauler]

I have the R4's on my CK20ST, the measurement from sidewall to sidewall is 51". I have the Kioti 52" rotary cutter and use it all the time to cut very tall and thick grass. The few times I've come close to stalling is when I've hit LARGE rocks or very thick wet weeds or tried to "blow" thru them a little too fast!