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Turbo Twister

Homemade mowers/brush hogs

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9 hours ago, _Wilson_™ said:

looks great!  now just shoot it green and yellow 😉 by the new design ... i take your lieving the timing belt cover off... ? IMO thats a great idea ... now you can check the condition of that timing belt at a glance, plus keep that area clean of debris kicked up. 

Funny enough, I quite like the grey, it looks galvanised from a distance! I will have guards over the pulleys, but where the tensioner is, I will leave it bare so I can see if the lower belt is slipping or not. 

 

The rear wheels also need a front mud guard to stop dirt flicking onto the deck when travelling to or from a field

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i gatcha .. i just like old school johndeere equipement ... can you post a video of the machine running at low rpm ? and focus in on the drive belts ? 

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2 hours ago, _Wilson_™ said:

i gatcha .. i just like old school johndeere equipement ... can you post a video of the machine running at low rpm ? and focus in on the drive belts ? 

As long as it's not yellow again it doesn't bother me what colour is it😂

 

Yeah I'll try get my friend to video it later on, I have a 3 hour drive to get to his place and its currently gale force wind and rain here, hopefully tomorrows weather will be better 🤞

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On 8/22/2020 at 4:04 PM, _Wilson_™ said:

looking forward to the video..... i hope the storm aren't bad. 

I have a video, I just have to post it on YouTube and will drop a link here.

 

On to the next challenge, I fit 4 more blades and spent the last hour timing it so no 2 blades clash! I think it will help reduce some pressure on the engine when cutting. Dad and I are going down the country tomorrow with it to clear a few paths through game crops and roadways for one of our pheasant shoots.

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this is an idler tension pulley, not a guide pulley. just wanted to show you a picture.

most cars these days have something similar, rides on the back side of the belt. guess it could ride on the front side.

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3 hours ago, LedFTed said:

this is an idler tension pulley, not a guide pulley. just wanted to show you a picture.

most cars these days have something similar, rides on the back side of the belt. guess it could ride on the front side.

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I had to make up something similar but I had to use a bolt and the belt itself as a tensioner. (I had to use whatever I I to hand). I think it works fine, when the bolt is tightened up, the tension keeps it tight and it cannot slackened off due to the belt tension pulling at it.

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Edited by Turbo Twister
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Turbo is back at work today so I'll take up the story. We went cutting yesterday and it quickly became apparent that having 8 blades rather than 4 was putting an extra load on the engine. We were lucky in that the landowner happened to come by and had an 8mm allen key which we needed to remove the blades. Once the mower was back to 4 blades it ran much better in the high grass. 

I must say that I was sceptical as to how well the mower might work but Turbo did a great job and it works extremely well. It can cope with nettles, briars ( blackberries) and even small willows which grow wild everywhere on the shoot.
 The game crop in these pictures was just over knee high. It includes millet, sunflower, maize, cornflowers, facelia and some others unknown to me.

We wanted to make a path through it so that the pheasants would have a dry space to wander in and to provide access for the feeding quad. I have videos as well and will post them when I figure it out!

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19 minutes ago, Bluezulu49 said:

Turbo is back at work today so I'll take up the story. We went cutting yesterday and it quickly became apparent that having 8 blades rather than 4 was putting an extra load on the engine. We were lucky in that the landowner happened to come by and had an 8mm allen key which we needed to remove the blades. Once the mower was back to 4 blades it ran much better in the high grass. 

I must say that I was sceptical as to how well the mower might work but Turbo did a great job and it works extremely well. It can cope with nettles, briars ( blackberries) and even small willows which grow wild everywhere on the shoot.
 The game crop in these pictures was just over knee high. It includes millet, sunflower, maize, cornflowers, facelia and some others unknown to me.

We wanted to make a path through it so that the pheasants would have a dry space to wander in and to provide access for the feeding quad. I have videos as well and will post them when I figure it out!

IMG_20200830_164503.jpg

IMG_20200830_164745.jpg

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something you may have over looked ?, but having 8 blades on it could make the engine very unbalanced as well ?!. but yeah, 8 blades on a small horse power engine wont end well.

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from the thick / tall vegetation he's bush hogging  .... Its doing a great job, but with that engine pulling down some .... if any change I'd make would be a more powerful engine ... but for now ... I'd keep like it is .... just keep the blades edged up ... the videos were perfect! keep them coming...  :-) might i ask what rpm the engine was running  at ? and that 300 does have a engine cooling fan ? 

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3 hours ago, _Wilson_™ said:

from the thick / tall vegetation he's bush hogging  .... Its doing a great job, but with that engine pulling down some .... if any change I'd make would be a more powerful engine ... but for now ... I'd keep like it is .... just keep the blades edged up ... the videos were perfect! keep them coming... 🙂 might i ask what rpm the engine was running  at ? and that 300 does have a engine cooling fan ? 

I wouldn't be able to lift anything heavier, it's hard enough to physically move the mower as is.

 

I'll have to check the specs for engine speed, but the quad does indeed have a cooling fan that works!

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1 hour ago, _Wilson_™ said:

  i figured weight would be an issue after you... rebuilt the deck with thicker steel.

Yep, to buy a 4ft flail mower new here would cost me over €2500 and weigh about 300kg which is too heavy for the 300 in my opinion. 

 

I've spent around €1100 total (not including my labour) but it's now built to my own preference. I will probably add some sort of jockey wheel to it down the line to aid with moving it around by hand. I reckon this one weighs about 120-140kg gross.

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pulling it too fast, the blades are not cutting very well, more like just knocking them down some , other than cutting them, but great job !.

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8 minutes ago, shadetree said:

pulling it too fast, the blades are not cutting very well, more like just knocking them down some , other than cutting them, but great job !.

It was admittedly too fast at times yes, but I have found that travelling a little faster and then going back over it the opposite direction at same speed or slower takes it down nicely.

 

It still needs a few tweaks here and there but its taking shape.

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1 minute ago, _Wilson_™ said:

a jockey wheel ... would work good .... I'd think... you might as well call that cutter a miniature bush hog.

I plan to make up my own custom jockey wheel, keep it compact and rotatable on the hitch. I also plan to change the angle of the hitch so that the front linkage is a little higher off the ground, the front frame that the toplink bolts to likes to dig down into the ground the rare time so a mod in hitch angles should fix the problem there.

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Can you disengage the cutters and have the engine just idle, or is the belt on the engine pully always tight?

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25 minutes ago, TBRider said:

Can you disengage the cutters and have the engine just idle, or is the belt on the engine pully always tight?

Yes, I have an adjustable shimmed bolt that can be undone to start the engine without rotating the drums, although we have found out after chewing through 2 V belts, that it seems better go start the engine with the drums engaged. 

 

I deliberately built the engine on a sliding frame so it can be removed with 4 bolts undone and lifted off for direct maintenance to the underside of the deck or go the lower timing belt.

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What about different size pulleys on the mandrel / spindles  on the engine to make it spin faster and some different blades 

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We were at our hunting shack this weekend to put in culverts and mow 5 miles of trail. My buddy with the tractor had a wheel break off the mower and had to improvise. Good thing the loader also had a front mount brush hog that would eat up to 4" trees. Got lots of work out of my Rubicon hauling firewood, tools, power poles, crusher screen and culverts.

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