Flail Mower Land Pride vs. Caroni Flail

[IslandTractor]

Buy the Caroni. You don't need a dealer to care for a flail mower. Besides, the only things that require more than grease for maintenance are an occasional belt and knife replacement. Easy peasy and your friends on TBN can walk you through those tasks.

 

[Ricn]

I sort of agree with not needing a dealer but is nice to have their backup when dealing with a warrantee issue. Mostly I'll be cutting pasture grass with no trees, vines and heavy brush so the light weight units will work perhaps. Does yours use cotter pins to hold the cutters on and if so, have they failed at all losing a cutter or two? Hate to think of an animal stepping on one...

Ricn

 

[IslandTractor]

I sort of agree with not needing a dealer but is nice to have their backup when dealing with a warrantee issue. Mostly I'll be cutting pasture grass with no trees, vines and heavy brush so the light weight units will work perhaps. Does yours use cotter pins to hold the cutters on and if so, have they failed at all losing a cutter or two? Hate to think of an animal stepping on one...

Ricn

What warranty issues? There are lots of Caroni owners on TBN and I don't recall any serious warranty issues. The most common problem is that the factory supplied belts are not kevlar so they break after a year or two. Replacing them with Gates Kevlar belts will triple the life span. Other items are simply the knives and clevises which are readily available either from AgriSupply or Flailmaster. There really haven't been any serious failures that I have heard of and I've been participating in Caroni mower discussions here for ten years.

 

[Ricn]

One would hope not to have any, but S--- does happen. Regardless of prices, I prefer looking at what I buy beforehand; driving 3K miles is out of the question and we don't have Ag Supply stores out west carrying Caroni. Kubota dealers often have Land Pride units to look at, not all models but enough to get the "feel" for what is being offered also a Rhino dealer 200mi to the east. If someone has a schematic diagram of Caroni 60 inch model 1500 that would help me immensely were I to see one.

Ricn

 

[Z-Michigan]

I sort of agree with not needing a dealer but is nice to have their backup when dealing with a warrantee issue.

It's a long time ago, but my experience with LandPride implements and warranty service is horrible. Non-existent, really. The selling dealer had me drop off the broken LP implement for the LP rep to look at, then told me 2 weeks later "Yeah, it's broken, rep agrees it shouldn't have. But he isn't going to do anything about it." This, for a new LandPride implement purchased from that dealer and used on a tractor with less hp than it was rated for.

Recently I got an explanation of this issue from someone - I was told that LP uses independent sales reps, and they simply have no incentive to spend any time or effort on warranty issues. I don't know if that's true, but it would make sense.

So for me, there's no chance I would spend double the money to get a LandPride whatever in the hopes of having good warranty service.

And, for what it's worth, I had a Caroni flail for 5 years and the only issue I had was belts shredding, which is a known issue and relatively easy and cheap to fix.

 

[Ricn]

Guess that doesn't say much for LP warrantee services does it? With LP and Kubota both in the same camp now, any chance that has changed? I could ask my dealer here about that but still, I may by the Caroni if I can get a diagram of how they are put together; for my uses doubt it would get worn out. So is the Ag Supply my only choice of purchase and which store should I deal with?

 

[IslandTractor]

One would hope not to have any, but S--- does happen. Regardless of prices, I prefer looking at what I buy beforehand; driving 3K miles is out of the question and we don't have Ag Supply stores out west carrying Caroni. Kubota dealers often have Land Pride units to look at, not all models but enough to get the "feel" for what is being offered also a Rhino dealer 200mi to the east. If someone has a schematic diagram of Caroni 60 inch model 1500 that would help me immensely were I to see one.

Ricn

I don't think more than 10% of Caroni buyers have ever seen one in person before purchasing from AgriSupply. I sure didn't. There are so many photos and descriptions on the interweb (and here on TBN) that unless there is something magical about laying on of hands, you can pretty much "see" one virtually.

You may want to look at the big flail mower thread ("Let's talk flail mowers") rather than this small one. There are lots of folks who have bought from AgriSupply and are happy.

I haven't seen a Landpride flail but they are a very good company generally. They are NOT known for their flail mowers however. Landpride is just another copy cat. If you insist on spending three times as much as a Caroni on a flail, do yourself a favor and buy a Mott/Alamo or Vrismo. Those are all lifetime mowers that stand up to highway dept and commercial use.

 

[Slagiatt]

i was toad by a land pride rep that land pride never made there own flail mower, they use different imports. sense i have one i hope it was italian made. purchase this used and its time for new bearing and clean up. it does seam to be a well built mower

 

[Ricn]

For the price I may go ahead with getting the Caroni as their prices are very attractive and with so many users being very pleased with theirs. Thanks for your reply, it all helps. This is such a great website, I have learned so much just in reading the posts, seeing what others have experienced.

Ricn

 

[Fallon]

i was toad by a land pride rep that land pride never made there own flail mower, they use different imports. sense i have one i hope it was italian made. purchase this used and its time for new bearing and clean up. it does seam to be a well built mower

I believe that was true up until this year. I heard they engineered an in house model recently & replaced the re-badged Italian ones they had been selling.