Finish Mower with Hydro height adjustment

[Exscriptor]

So this is my second mower that I have made with the hydraulic mowing height adjustment. The first was quite labor intensive and rather pricey, so I went back to the drawing board and did a re-design. The steel plate parts for this one were made with a water-jet cutter and then welded together as needed. This one uses only 2 - 1.5" cylinders with a flow divider and locking valves for each. It's on a 72" KingKutter. This design is less than 1/2 the cost of the original one that I built and works wonders. No stopping, getting off, adjusting the greasy mower wheel axles! It hooks up to a set of remotes on the rear of the tractor and you can adjust the cutting height while mowing, no stopping necessary.

 

[Gordon Gould]

That linkage looks like some pretty complex design work to me - very nice work.

gg

 

[chim]

I agree with gg on the build quality, but wonder why it's necessary. I'm on my 4th RFM. When I hitch them up for the first time, I set the cutting height. It stays there forever.

 

[Smokeydog]

That’s some great fabrication skills! I can see that would be handy if you had to adjust often.
We have a few decades of rear finish mower experience. First mower I’ve seen with the discharge on the left. Having the front blade tips slightly lower than the back reduces required hp and improves cut quality. Had to adjust to get that. Played around with cutting height initially and settled on a setting and don’t move. Of course we don’t custom cut.

The gauge wheel spindles were a constant wear problem. Went to 3500# trailer axle stubs and hubs and solved a lot of issues. Whole lot better sealed bearings beats the bushings. Greatly reduced caster drag. Helps support a heavy deck. Height Adjustments are harder but we don’t need to adjust. Your system would fix adjusting that issue.

Do the cylinders ever get out of sync? Does a fully retract or extend recalibrate?

 

[Exscriptor]

I do have different acreages where the cutting height is different, that's why I decided to take this challenge on. It is a huge time saver, and setting custom mowing heights for different types of turf or grasses is a big advantage. As far as syncing the cylinders, yes they need to be synced every now and then, as the flow divider is only about 99% accurate. But all you have to do is run the cylinders all the way in or out (raising or lowering the mower); the flow divider will bypass the cylinder that is fully contracted or extended and send everything to the cylinder still needing to catch up. Not a problem!