FEL Mounted Brush Mower / Trimmer

[Hilbilly]

what do you plan to cut with this?

Mainly grass and light brush that grows along the sides of our driveway and the trails we have on the property. Also for trimming back branches and small treees that grow over our fence lines. We live in the mountains and our driveway is cut into the side hill, with some flat sections. The slope of the bank on the high side varies all along the driveway, which is the reason I need to have a hydraulic tilt. That allows me to adjust the side tilt angle on the fly, to suit the ground slope.

 

[searcyfarms]

sounds like it should work i jsut wouldnt get too ambitious with heavier stuff, spinning hydraulic motors dont maintain speed well and will be even worse with a light center - however its quicker to spin back up if its lighter, you will find the sweet spot and learn much using it, they do throw stuff EVERYWHERE so be aware of that and damaging your tractor with bigger chunks - have fun with it and be careful, its easy to get things off center and roll over which might even be more precarious in your area/situation

 

[JWR]

sounds like it should work i jsut wouldnt get too ambitious with heavier stuff, spinning hydraulic motors dont maintain speed well and will be even worse with a light center - however its quicker to spin back up if its lighter, you will find the sweet spot and learn much using it, they do throw stuff EVERYWHERE so be aware of that and damaging your tractor with bigger chunks - have fun with it and be careful, its easy to get things off center and roll over which might even be more precarious in your area/situation

I will defer to Hillbilly to answer for his configuration, but he has a heavier center (if you mean the blade carrier) than the commercially built units like the Lane Shark because he is using a modified Landpride bush hog for the cutter which has a stump jumper center (shown in post #7 pictures.) He is also using a much more robust pump driving the hydraulic motor than Lane Shark, TB-One or others that depend on the tractor pump. My Lane Shark DOES maintain speed very well, is robust, and does not slow down/bog down a lot like the other much heavier units that I got rid of. His won't need to 'spin back up' other than when he purposely shuts it down because he has lots of overkill in hydraulic drive. The heaviest stuff i cut with the Lane Shark on the FEL is 2" overhanging limbs along meadows and fence rows. It does well and does not bog down (not that you couldn't bog it down if you were careless or nuts and attacked big heavy limbs or tight clusters of them.)

None of the 3 types of cutters I used throw stuff everywhere (anyway not toward the tractor at least) & as I said that was a pleasant surprise for me. Hillbilly's is homebrew and I wait with interest to hear his reports. I'm betting they will be good.

 

[Hilbilly]

I took it for another test drive this afternoon and tried to take videos of the operation to show the hydraulic tilt function. Apparently I am not the best at operating a Gopro clone and the first video didn't take. The recorder shut down. This is not the first time this has happened and probably not the last . The 2nd video turned out but by then the hard work was done. The second one doesn't involve as much tilt manipulation as the first one but it does show how it works. I will provide a link as soon as it uploads. I started uploading a 5 minute video to Youtube 2 1/2 hrs ago and it's only 38% done. Maybe it's my satellite internet connection or something I am doing but this is nuts.

 

[searcyfarms]

it takes a long time to upload videos unless you have substantial internet upload speed - most satellite is 1 meg or less - my dsl is only 768K so its worse but doesnt hve the latency satellite does - frustrating for sure

have fun mowing !!!

 

[Hilbilly]

OK after almost 4 hrs the Youtube upload is done but the video quality has been lost. I thought the reason it was taking so long was because of the higher quality resolution I used when recording and having satellite connection. Apparently the quality didn't transfer through but here it is. If I knew it was going to take this long I would have made sure I got a better video that showed how this works.

 

[JWR]

Fantastic. No debris pounding your tractor or threatening your body, brush being cut, nice flexibility with the cutting angle, all looking awfully good for an early outing !

How about an updated picture or two on how & where you added the cylinder for the angle adjustments?

By the way: have you checked to prevent the Landpride from dumping lubricant through the vent, etc. ? Maybe it does not have an open-to-the-air vent? I'm sure it is not designed/intended to operate on it's side or large angles for extended periods of time. Overfill it to get good lubrication maybe ?

 

[Hilbilly]

Fantastic. No debris pounding your tractor or threatening your body, brush being cut, nice flexibility with the cutting angle, all looking awfully good for an early outing !

How about an updated picture or two on how & where you added the cylinder for the angle adjustments?

By the way: have you checked to prevent the Landpride from dumping lubricant through the vent, etc. ? Maybe it does not have an open-to-the-air vent? I'm sure it is not designed/intended to operate on it's side or large angles for extended periods of time. Overfill it to get good lubrication maybe ?

Nice catch!! I never thought about the gear box not being designed for vertical use. I will check that out tomorrow and thanks very much for that. You may have saved me from a costly repair and/or just added something else I need to attend to.

I believe I'm going through the same learning process the Lane Shark guys went through in order to develop their product. They started out with a FREE brush mower and played around with different configurations until they got it right. I don't have the experience and knowledge they have but I'm getting close to having what I want. Plus the satisfaction and enjoyment of having made it myself.

I will get some pics of the hydraulic cylinder setup and post them here. Pretty simple but I may make some changes to improve it.

 

[JWR]

Among the various impressive and interesting features of your rig is horizontal mounting rails with some bolts as big "set screws" allowing right/left position changes when desired. That may just be part of your developmental process and not necessarily in the final product but seems useful.

 

[Hilbilly]

Here are a couple of pics of the hydraulic cylinder setup.


You are right about the rails to move the mower further out and the intention is to get it away from the cab more, when the mower is used in a vertical position. That would be useful when trimming branches along the fence line and keep flying branches away from the cab. I got the idea from the Limb Ninja.