sickle bar mowers love them or hate them?

[KYErik]

I cut about 6 acres of hay with a JD #5 mower for about 7-8 years. If there were any mouse or birds nests along the ground, they would get stuck on the tips of the guards- which would stop that section up. I just had to watch it closely, backing up would usually clear it out and then I'd have to lift it over the cut section and drop it back down right at the edge of the tall grass. I like disk mowers better, but for the price sickle mowers aren't the worse thing.

Every 2 years or so, I would pull the bar out and touch up the sections with an angle grinder. Oh, and I learned that if the Pittman arm bolts start to get loose, you will be buying a new wooden arm soon... Keep them all nice and tight.

 

[powerscol]

It can be a love/hate relationship. Now once I got my hydraulic top link the love came back as I can adjust the pitch on the fly for a good cut. I have an IH 1300 9" model.

 

[rbtjr]

Quote! "The one maintenance issue I had is that the so-called conic bolts, which anchor the operating arms that are attached to the sickle blades, loosened and came all the way out. It was a real chore to get them replaced, plus they were very expensive when bought from BEFCO. I was already accustomed to tightening the conic bolts frequently, but now I make doubly sure every time I hook up the mower to tighten the conic bolts with a torque wrench." End quote!

Just curious, why don't you use a blue thread locker on the conic bolts. Blue can be loosened with brute strength, Red on the other hand will have to have heat to be removed. I do not have any experience with sickle mowers, but I do with thread lockers.

Good point. If I had thought of it I would have use the thread lock.

 

[bigmannh451]

I have a NH451 that was advertised as 70 down 90 up. I have not used it yet. I ordered an operators manual and it said 15 down 35 up. I see Sweet Tractors has them for sale and they say 70/90. What is the correct operating range of a NH 451?

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I don't know what is correct, but I have a steel bar made that locks my 451 straight up, and I've used it that way to trim trees, without any problems at all.

I also mow around my ponds, and sometimes the bar goes down pretty steep, no problem at all...

SR

 

[bigmannh451]

Thanks, Sawyer Rob.

 

[Jarrod32]

For what it is worth, on our farm my father kept an old (early 50's) John Deere MT with a belly-mount sickle mower and used it for mowing ditches right up until the late 1980s. He always felt that the sickle mower did a better job than any of the rotary cutters he ever tried. Other than pulling the sickle out and touching it up with an angle grinder every year (like someone else mentioned), I don't remember any major problems with that mower.

Eventually, he went to a disc mower because - in his words - "it does almost as a good a job as the sickle".