Which Caroni rotor?

[leonz]

flailmower saga continued:

I am not trying to argue against or for anything. Last night, I had decided to buy a flail mower with the F rotor (if Agrisupply can get it). This morning, I made a few more telephone calls and, as a result, have decided to reassess that decision. I spent the whole day talking to people about the differences. My decision is between a flail mower and a rear-discharge finish mower. True, that is a rotary-type mower, but most vendors list finish mowers separately from rotary mowers of the heavy duty, single rotating mass type.

Let's assume that a good, 72" (e.g, Caroni) flail mower and a good finsh mower (e.g., Land Pride) cost exactly the same. They do in my town. They both mow grass and are relatively safe compared to the single-blade rotary mower. Which would you chose?

1) Maintenance: Flail is more, but perhaps not a whole lot more. You do not need to grease the spindles each day of use for the finish mower. It has fewer parts and fewer parts to fail. Sharpening is just 3 blades, not 60+, but that is not done very often for either. The flail mower has a rear roller that has come up a few times on this forum as something that gets bent. The finish mower does not. The flail mower tends to burn belts (based on comments here). I have not seen the same frequency of belt failures on finish mowers mentioned.


If you bang up a blade you either mow without one pair or replace the bad one where you have 112 twelve knives and you can remove the offender and its opposite set if you do not have spares and trade blades from either end and be one slicing width short on one side.


You have to drive the old burnt grease out with the fresh grease-dont forget that-you may have a stack of roller bearings in an arbor but it still needs grease everytime you mow or after you mow.



2) Quality of cut: On relatively short grass, the finish mower is probably best.

tears the grass blades

On taller stuff and weeds, the flail chops finer. After a second cutting, is that an advantage? The flail can handle bigger weeds. But, once the big weeds are cut down to size, is that an advantage anymore?

it keeps down all the weeds soo they cannot crawl along the sod


3) Safety: No difference.


wrong

look up the posting with the link to a tennesse news paper that described a town ship that parked its mowers after a judges order-after one of them flew a considerable distance and blew a hole in a house wall and landed near the crib of a child that was in it.

look for iron horses posting about his experience with a brush mower and how quickly he got rid of it after they delivered it.

4) Uneven terrain: The finish mower is built to have a floating deck. The flail is firmly attached to the 3PH. However, accessory wheels are available for the flail to help with uneven terrain. Can the flail be modified and connected with the same type of floating attachment as the finish mower?

Only if you have a gang of rear mounted wide finish flail mowers that trail the prime mover. 3 and larger width hydraulic lifted gang flails do not have them as they are supported by each flails rear roller

The units that do not have rollers are the flail choppers which are wheeled and used to chop corn residue, cotton stalks, peanut vines, late grasses to eliminate bad growth in spring hay- mows the hay after the third cutting after the first heavy frost to aid in spring growth for the first cutting etc.




5) Speed of mowing: I got no quantitative information about that.

the slower you mow the better the cutting with a flail and less clippings in tall sod grass
the closer to the ground you cut the less there is to cut later and fewer weeds- you can get a lot of crop circles with rotaries


The slower you mow with a flail mower the smaller the clippings as it chops them up more per foot of advance and the more trash and weeds you slice to bits.

I run flat out in low range with our wheel horse hydro and wide open thottle to mow our turf to carpet mowing in a spiral pattern-no stopping to turn or braking saves fuel and time and it looks like a golf course even with turf that has been heat stressed and it comes back quicker as the grass blade is stressed much less as it is sliced rather than torn with a rotary blade
and you can go back and mow at 90 degree angles to get more grass mowed or slice up what you have mowed on the turf even finer; you can not do that with a brush mower or a rotary finish mower as it only blows the grass around.


6) Parts: With Caroni, are you dependent on Agrisupply? With a finish mower from a local dealer and a national brand (e.g., LandPride), you have more options. Of course, if you go to a national brand of flail, then there is a significant price difference.


All bearings are metric
All V belts are metric
chains and sprockets are univeral SAE from what I remember, a fifty chain is the same as a 50 chain in italy or here.


the caroni rotor is set to hang blades at 3, 6, 9, 12 oclock and not staggered and that is simply an issue of balancing for their design-if it is a hollow rotor with welded ends-I am unaware if it is solid bar stock or a tube with welded machned end for the pulleys, bearings, and seals.

On our lawn genies the rotor weldment was constructed using machined end weldments and a sheet of steel was bent around the end weldments and welded in place with the knife hangers added later- heavy steel cut to length, bent and welded to the sheet/tube to create the shackle hangers which use spring tensioned hangers and non spring hangers to hold the tapered knives.



Conclusion: Still undecided. Is it a Jaguar vs. Cadillac comparison? I would really appreciate input from longterm users.


Like I have said I dont have a nickle invested and only my 30 years of using them to go by.

the only reason people started mowing the grass and brush around thier homes and farms was to get rid of the snakes hiding in it.

(Mott Mower would still be selling walk behind and towed motorised flail mowers if Alamo had not succeeded in buying them and destroying thier competition and the niche Mott had for walk behind flail mowers)

Prior to this I used a IH lowboy with a 6 foot belly mower on 12 acres of sod and the arbors failed repeatedly and fell out of the mower deck afet having the dealer install new ones so that soured me on rotary mowers.

My second cousins nearly killing his daughter 2 years ago with an impact leg injury only added to my beliefs in how dangerous they are and flailmowers dont do that and are the preferred method of mowing in europe and due to the more stringent safety standards and noise standards they have there.

If the friction clutch shut down methods used for power tools was used for rotary mowers I would feel that they were somewhat safer but as they are driven with an unrestricted drive train I dont see that occuring as they are less expensive to manufacture.







John

BTW: Spellcheck works on other forums I use, but not on this one. Is there a CP setting I have missed? My apologies in advance for misspellings.

 

[john4153]

@leonz,

Re: Safety. You seem to think I am referring to a single-blade bush mower. The accident you reference was with such a mower. That is why I tried to explain at the start of my comparison that I was comparing a rear finish mower, specifically a LandPride FDR1672, to a Caroni TM1900 that are approximately the same price delivered.

Re: Floating or rigid mounts. If the flail just floats on its rear roller as you describe, then why are anti-scalping wheels sold for it? From what I have seen, both in demos and in catalogues, the 3PH mount of the an RFM -- one that rides on four wheels -- is significantly different than for a flail. The former is designed to be flexible; the latter is not.

@All: I spoke with Matt yesterday at Agrisupply. He can order the F rotor. He did not think it would be that much more expensive (after adjusting for the additional cutters), but delivery would probably not be until Spring, 2011. That delay is due to a factory vacation in Italy and shipping. We did not get into the actual price.

John

 

[IslandTractor]

Floating or rigid mounts[/u]. If the flail just floats on its rear roller as you describe, then why are anti-scalping wheels sold for it? From what I have seen, both in demos and in catalogues, the 3PH mount of the an RFM -- one that rides on four wheels -- is significantly different than for a flail. The former is designed to be flexible; the latter is not.

I've never seen anti scalp wheels sold for a flail, at least not for Caroni. Are you sure you are not confused by the anti scalp wheels Caroni sells for its RFM? AgriSupply sells both the flail and the RFM but the antiscalp wheels are only for the RFM.

Having owned one for the past three years I can assure you that the flail mower floats on the 3PT and rides on the rear roller.

 

[DennisH]

Is anyone using a TM1900 behind a 28hp tractor? I have a JD 870 and need to figure out which flail mower to buy.

 

[Eagleview]

I've never seen anti scalp wheels sold for a flail, at least not for Caroni.

Maybe anti scalp skids is what was meant ?

 

[Z-Michigan]

Is anyone using a TM1900 behind a 28hp tractor? I have a JD 870 and need to figure out which flail mower to buy.

If this helps, I'm using a TM1900 behind a 40 engine hp/32 pto hp tractor (Kioti DK40SE HST) and I feel that I have more than adequate power, but not a big reserve. If you have 28 pto you would probably be just barely OK, especially on lawn grass or other easy to cut material; not on heavy brush. If the 28hp is engine hp, I think you would be better off with a smaller flail.

 

[john4153]

I've never seen anti scalp wheels sold for a flail, at least not for Caroni.

Here is an excerpt from the Befco H70 catalog:

I assumed the gauge wheels were to prevent scalping.

BTW, I got the opportunity to look at a JD390 up close and saw how the top link of the 3PH floats in a slot. I was mistaken in my comment, which was based on photos in which the top attachment looked like a hole instead of a slot or other floating feature.

I now own that 390, and it will be delivered this morning. I have the offset version and am anxious to see how well it works.

John

 

[IslandTractor]

Congratulations on your new JD flail. We need photos and a review of your experience. Was the cost in the same range as the Caroni?

 

[john4153]

My JD390 has an little history. It was bought new by a local small town and not used. Then a Bobcat dealer got it (I guess on trade or at liquidation) and used it a few times at his home. As you can see, the paint is like new and the knives are too. (I was so anxious to use it, I didn't wash and wax it first. That is for tomorrow.) I have seen new flail mowers that looked worse. There is a New Holland on TractorHouse that is a "new" 2001 and has more rust than mine has. I need to run the S/N on Monday to find out what year it is.

Well, I got everything up and running in about an hour -- it was my first time dealing with a PTO, so I followed the instructions. I greased everything I could see, including the two roller zerks. Fours hours later, I got done mowing everything. According to Deere, my DX40 is a little underpowered, but I had no issues except with some really long and tough grass. I know it has a name, but I don't know it. It is like the really thick grass on can see on the East coast sand dunes. It was sort of blown over and laying down before I mowed it. Only one small spot made me slow down. The rest of the time was pedal to the metal in the slow gear.

At first, I didn't know I would like the offset. After driving with it a little, I wouldn't have anything else. If the left tire is on mowed stuff, the overlap is perfect. You don't have to hurt your old back or neck looking behind you. Also, because the rear tires provide propulsion and the mower is aft of that pivot point, you can almost swivel it by making a very sharp right turn to get around obstacles. Don't turn away from obstacles, unless you are pretty far away, or you push the mower into them.

One big problem I didn't anticipate. As I was mowing near the barn at the end of the day, all h**l broke lose. The tractor stopped as did the mower. There were funny noises and smells. I was afraid I had broken something. On inspection in the barn, I found that I had run over a bunch of Romax wiring, and it had wrapped itself around the center of the flail. Now who would throw a coil of 100 feet of that stuff in a field? (I should say the house was almost vacant for the previous 3 years. I just bought it.) After a little wire cutting, I was able to get the mess cleaned up and everything worked as normal. I worked from on top carefully, as there is no way I will ever crawl under that thing, unless it is on stands. I must have a clutch somewhere, as no shear pins were broken.

Overall, I am very happy with it. I may get or rent a cheap rotary to get into the woods a little more. The JD impresses me as being made like a tank. I went over a lot of dead wood and other stuff, and at the end of the day, nothing was damaged.

Here are those pictures:

OOPs, forgot about cost. It was several hundred dollars less than the Caroni and the seller delivered it to my door. I don't have a trailer yet.

John

 

[IslandTractor]

Nice mower. It is a lot further offset than the Caroni TM1900. I like the offset but it does limit the ability to garage or barn store the thing while attached.

I've wrapped old angle iron, hose, bailing wire etc around my flail. Just a pain to clean off but no damage. The is usually no slip clutch on flails as the belts serve as shock load protection by slipping.

Looks like you got a great deal.

 

[sodamo]

Having found some old barb wire a few times, I can relate - what a PITA to clean off :laughing:

Nice looking mower

 

[leonz]

Having found some old barb wire a few times, I can relate - what a PITA to clean off :laughing:

Nice looking mower

I will see your barbed wire and raise you a roll of weed barrier plastic its worse!

 

[IslandTractor]

I will see your barbed wire and raise you a roll of weed barrier plastic its worse!

My favorite was a hose. Nothing special except that after being snagged by the flail it was coming at me from in front of the tractor slithering quickly through the grass like some monster snake. I could see rapid movement coming toward me me but didn't figure out it was a hose until after the tractor stalled. I did not need to change underwear but did have a "prey animal" experience. I was happy to unravel the hose considering the alternative reality option.