Turbo Twister

It was designed for a fine cut for a ride on mower, but it lacked the height adjustment for rough cutting. Now it has the height for rough cutting, I would say if you wanted a fine cut just use a ride on mower? I see where you're coming from though, I would say that maybe the rear wheels should be wider perhaps? To reduce rutting of the ground should it be soft in places? I still have to add bolting points for the offset positions for the drawbar, and from working with silage harvesters in the past, I know it's a lot easier to turn an implement that is offset to one side than one that is directly behind a tractor/atv. Now is the time to fix any issues though before I get the engine on so thanks for your input.

The issue with castor wheels for me anyway, would be the deck creeping to one side if running across an elevated bank, at least with fixed wheels the mower should stay behind the bike. But I did think about rotating castors, I have another plan up my sleeve to have a detachable pair of wheels that fixes to one end of the deck, so that I can remove the drawbar and rear wheels, lift up the other end and wheel the mower through my side gate into storage, I might even use the wheels I have, but have 2 uses for them. I'll draw that on paper later on if you don't get what I'm saying, I have to make this quite practical too. The other advantage is that because the wheels are so far away from the hitch, turning shouldn't be an issue. I might attach it to the quad later today and test the turning capabilities of it in my garden

I thought about that alright. I just hope they're not too slack that if I was to fit all 8 blades on the 2 drums, none of them would clash. Although I think there's plenty of room for them to move.

Got a lot of paint work done today, I also welded up the other wheel frame, it needs a slight adjustment to widen the opening where the top link will bolt on, I left it a bit tight! I just used whatever bars I could find to throw it all together for a few photos! Overall I'm very happy with the result, with the 3 top links it's so easy to tweak the height of the deck in 3 areas, front, left and right, even when the engine is fit this should be easy to adjust. I contacted the engine seller today about getting the engine sometime in the next few weeks. He is back working again due to demand of maintenance from those with lawn mowers issues. For your interest @_Wilson_™, the engine is clockwise rotating, so this will suit the existing setup just fine. The guy suggested using a manually operated spring loaded tensioner pulley rather than an electrically operated one, he reckons they give less hassle down the line. The old blades sure are wrecked! I dry fit 2 new blades but am finding an issue with the blades not tightening up against the drums?? Would the excess paint in the hollowing of the metal drums be the problem? Either that or I think I'll need to use a spring washer between the drum and lock nut?! I also replaced the 4x bearings in the bearing houses for the spindles that rotate the drums, this project is moving along nicely.

Thanks @Bighanded! I decided to make my own due to the lack of small scale ones available on the market and at a reasonable price. I also will need to make a 2 wheeled trolley for this to fit it through my side gate for storage as I won't have room for it in the garage when its built. I learned to weld through a farmer friend of mine that I met during a forestry course we did together 11 years ago, it took me a long time to get the knack of it and I'm only getting good at it now! I had thought about making up a front mounting bracket for my own bike but for now, I just want to get out and mow some grass!😁

Update from earlier** I spent quite a lot of time thinking about how to fix the rear wheels independently of eachother, and the pictures show what I have come up with. I don't expect I'll get the 16mm steel drill bit this week but if I do all the better! I just etch primed the new bracket on the deck and the wheel castor frame, I will make the other side tomorrow and give them all another coat. I also sprayed the inside of the belt and pulley housing with a few coats of yellow, it will need more as it's a difficult colour to bring out perfectly, even after 2 or 3 coats. Overall I'm very happy with what I've done, also eliminating any fixed steel cutting across the path of the outfeed chute. More tomorrow folks!

Here's the setup for the front linkage, I'm happy how it has worked out, when the mower is at its lowest height, the top link is at its shortest length, so it now has a minimum cutting height at the front at least. I will double check this when the rear wheels are fit and it's attached to the quad. I'm currently waiting on a 16mm steel drilling bit and 6x 16mm steel pins for said top links so I can bolt them in place. More to come later today. Next step is to modify the tow hitch I bought for the quad, it's far too long and high, so I'm going to modify it into a swan neck type hitch that can tow with a ball or a pin.

So the issue I have with the rear wheels the way they are currently set up is that the adjuster bar isn't high enough above the deck to get a decent ground clearance height, or at least not one I'm happy with. The bar wouldn't be a major issue running across the chute apart from stones flying etc but I think I have come up with a better design for the problem anyway. I want to keep the engine roughly over the rear/middle of the deck, transferring the majority of weight to the back wheels rather than the rear axle of the quad. This should also aid in keeping decent traction of the mower on uneven ground as I have been told the engine is about 25kg with the battery and key start etc.. hopefully I can get it in the coming weeks so I can start refitting parts and organising where everything will go.

So do I! The funny side to this story is that they have both seen the build up from day 1, yet they don't know it's for them!😂

Finally getting back to the mower project as I have run out of epoxy resin for now! The weather is beaming today, so an ideal time to get some painting done. You might think I'm colour blind but yes, I am painting the deck yellow and the hitch bar red lol! More to come on this over the coming days, I have to sort out those rear wheels, as I'm not happy with the rear axle crossing the area of the rear chute!

I saw something similar to it on YouTube, but it didn't give me a lot of info about making the jig. So trial and error really is how I came about it. The most difficult part was fixing the wood blank without having screws hit the router bit. I couldn't clamp it down because I had to rotate the wood by hand with every pass of the router. It's really a 2 person job to do one efficiently because using one hand to move the router can be risky.

It was a bust week for me woodwork wise, I didn't go anywhere near any metal! I have been collecting beer bottle caps for almost a year now, and after gathering approximately 600, I could finally start the wedding gift I talked about doing for months. Unfortunately the couple who are receiving it have had to postpone their wedding until later in the year but they will receive it as planned regardless. I painstakingly sorted all the caps so no two are the same, then stuck them all down with Tec7 into 5 rows from the outside edge inwards. I did a dry fit of each row first and had to squeeze some caps a little to get a perfect circle. When I got to the 6th row, I found that the circle was no longer perfectly round so I had to come up with another idea. My mother suggested just putting a clay bowl in the middle that could be removed for cleaning etc.. I liked the idea, but wasn't convinced to use a factory made bowl, so me being stubborn, I went and made a wooden one, using only the tools I had to hand (yep, I don't have a lathe!). I have a mobile chainsaw mill that I seldom use, but I milled a decent branch of chestnut last year and it dried out very nicely and straight, thanks to the heavy duty ratchet straps and adequate spacers, I took the second board from top as the grain was rubbing in the right direction for this particular piece. I spent 9 hours the first day attempting to dig out the inside of a chestnut blank, which didn't live up to my taste, so I scrapped that the next day and spent a further 4 hours making a router jig. This worked wonders for me, all beit a bit slow. I had to change the curve half way though to deepen the outer edges of the dish.. I also had to modify the router cutter by extending the shaft from an old bit and welding it onto the new one. So about 12 hours later, including the fitting of a teak dovetail key to cover up a little router incident, the bowl is complete, oiled with olive oil to bring out the grain detail and once the new batch of epoxy resin shows up, I'll cover the caps over. A very fun project (the bowl making) but a lathe would be great for any future bowls.

Half the battle I guess if you have a lot of grass to cut!

Came across this on FB today, what are your opinions??

How long is it? I'm about 6k miles away👀

The coasters will keep me busy for a while!😂 I might get back to the mower tomorrow for a change of scenery. Yeah those river tables make a decent amount of money too, there isn't a big enough market for them here and usually the table is built to the clients requirements, but I prefer to do my own thing and if people dont like them they can do one lol

No glass, I don't like the idea of something that can smash if it falls over, specially with kids around. I'm going to epoxy resin the top once I fill in the centre piece with an engraved circle of hardwood, this will sit up about 1/2inch higher than the caps. I have yet to make it, something to do another day I guess. I'm still gluing up the caps for the coasters!

I have been busy the last few days with some woodwork. I spent 6 hours on the table saw yesterday ripping down Iroko slips and mitring them along with a load of plywood blocks. I made up the frames of 41 coasters for beer glasses, I'm still gluing the caps down before I epoxy resin them all in place. I also finally got started making the bottle cap table top which is looking pretty good so far!

I think what would be better than any trailer fenders would be longer mudflaps on the rear quad wheels, they do throw up some amount of muck when you're moving! The issue I would have with mud guards on the trailer is them just plugging up with muck the whole time, I won't be able to wash the trailer before bringing it home most of the time, so yeah, probably better off without them as you say.

Yep, but they need to be detachable so the trailer can fit in the van with the bike, so I'll have to make up something in that line. Alternatively I could just make up aluminium ones with a slim frame over the wheels. I haven't given it much thought yet.

Yeah, sometime in 2021! Haha

@Fishfiles today is your lucky day! I finally finished the trailer! I fit the correct suspension units and bolted them all up with stainless steel nuts and bolts, did a quick dry fit for photos and took it all apart again to make room for other work I'm trying to get done! Also the quad is in the van so I have more space in the garage (its only 10ft x 18ft but we have lots of presses and a bench which takes up about half the floor space. Can't wait to get using it but I need to concentrate on getting jobs done around the house while I'm stuck at home..

To be honest, I haven't thought about the engine much, but my thoughts on it was to use a spring loaded pulley to engage the drum blades. I think the best thing to do would be to get the engine first, then mess around with various pulley sizes and see what works best for this deck. I ordered a load of paint lately, etch primer, black, yellow and red gloss.. going to paint the outside of the deck yellow, the underside black and the rear wheel linkages red to match the top links that came in the post, so it might be painful to look at lol The top links are quite short, 320mm at the shortest, 480mm at the longest so I should get decent clearance front to back and left to right. I have done as much as I can with the block wall as I ran out of material, so I'm going to concentrate on a few indoorsy projects with rain expected tomorrow, then get back to the mower next week.

I haven't had a chance to get at it since the last day, I've been rebuilding a wall in the back garden the last 2 days now that I'm out of work. I ordered a load of stuff last week that has cost me about 250euro total, as @jeepwm69 says it's not cheap to buy parts for them. @Fishfiles I'm ok with this thread the way it is thanks, this thread should be covering the bike and trailer only though😂 I made another thread specifically for the mower, I'll have more updates on that tomorrow!

Thanks @_Wilson_™ I have it sorted now, I had the notifications turned off for a good few threads, so I shouldn't miss any replies now!