What makes of lawnmower would people recommend ?. Have ancient Flymo at the moment. Thinking of something similar, about 14 ins cut. I don't think this OT as I am doing the lawn myself .
TIA
Dave
What makes of lawnmower would people recommend ?. Have ancient Flymo at the moment. Thinking of something similar, about 14 ins cut. I don't think this OT as I am doing the lawn myself .
TIA
Dave
In message , Dave Stanton wrote
For the past 4/5 years I've had a (cheap - £100) rotary petrol mower. I wish I had bought one 20 years ago - no more trailing wires, cuts long wet grass, cuts the grass in about quarter of the time I spent with various versions of hover/flymo.
Recommendation 1 - get a mower with grass collection - larger hover mowers don't work that well with a full grass box. Recommendation 2 - depending on the size of your lawn, get a petrol mower.
After years of crappy hand-me-down electric flymo and rotary type electric mowers we bought a McCulloch petrol rotary for about £80 in the Argos autumn sale. We were going to buy a higher end electric Flymo (who are interestingly the same group as McCulloch, Electrolux I think) but we were amazed at how thin the plastic was. The McCulloch in comparison has much sturdier plastic components. We have only used it a few times but it seems fine and the job now takes about a third of the time. The only thing that doesn't seem very good are the "pressed steel" type carburettor components etc.
Sam
Thanks people, its looking like a petrol mower then, I had already started thinking along those lines.
Cheers
Dave
I bought a petrol rotary last year - it's great. After using an old petrol cylinder for many years it's so much easier - you don't have to worry about the grass being a bit damp. I went for one with a rear roller, which I find is good for going along the edges - I guessed that one with 4 wheels would not be as easy. I also went for one which propels itself along - my wife said "in 10 years time, you'll be glad of that". Although that did make it a bit more expensive.
Peter.
Best choice, I agree. Go for a Honda engine if you can, in my experience of 3 different engines they run quietest and start very easily. I had trouble with a Briggs & Stratton engine although I hear they've improved a lot since then. Whatever you do, give Tecalemit engines the elbow (they're Italian) One other thing, mowers with a rear roller (like Hayter) are much easier to handle on lawn edges than the ones with 4 wheels, which tend to slip off the edge and chew up the lawn. They give a nicer finish too.
Peter
Maybe it's just me, but I found the B&S engine on my previous lawnmower a damn sight easier to start than my current Honda model. It had one of those bulb things on the inlet to squirt extra fuel in for starting, and this was nearly 100% effective. The Honda has a, well, extra position on the throttle lever. It won't start without it, but it's hardly one pull and into action.
We have had several electric hovers and even a petrol hover last time. The petrol was the better one, but even that wasn't without its problems. This time around we were looking at the smaller ride-on types, though we settled on 4hp self driving petrol rotary type with four wheels.
I think we made the right choice, its surprisingly quicker than an hover and much less tiring due to the self-drive. It also stalls much less than the petrol hover did in the tall grass after it had been allowed to grow for a while.
The only trouble is the grass box needing to be emptied and the drive wheels slipping when the ground is a little too wet. You let go of the satety to empty the box and obviously the engine stops, then needs to be restarted after the box is refitted.
Our B&S always starts first time... It also has the bulb type primer on the side of the carb.
Whoa! Careful Harry, I'll be reporting you to your ISP for flood posting, the rate you're going at.
Hope you had a nice weekend. How's your caravan?
I got a decent powered electric rotary (yellow body, Alko?). The hassle of a trailing cable is outweighed IMO by the quietness, lack of pollution & lack of maintenance hassles etc. What does tend to go wrong with these types however is the plastic peg coupling the drive disk (on the motor shaft) to the blade shears off making the mower extremely wimpy when tackling longish/damp grass. Easily fixed with a metal bolt.
The only other hassle is the small grass basket, but the petrol mower I borrowed from my neighbour when my electric was in above wimpy state (before I'd sussed what was wrong and fixed it) wasn't any better, and you had to keep restarting it after emptying the basket.
Frankly none of em.
Unless you spend waht seems to be a fortune - 500 quid and up for a pushalong or 3000 and up for a ride on. none of them take the sort of punishment my 'lawn' dishes out...
Lord, is there any other sort?
Ive got over an acre to mow here, and the ride on got stolen...
My Hayterette has 4 wheels on it.
Briggs and strattons work well as long as they are not clapped out and have fresh petrol in them.
Stale petrol screws em up. the first start after the winter is always a bitch.
On my ride on, the only thing that really worked porperly after 10 years was the briggs and stratton engine, and the only time it failed to start was with two year old petrol in it. And a dead battery. The rest of it was totally shagged (westwood it was).
Warm the cylinder head up with a heat gun (or blowtorch, if you have large cojones). Works a treat for that tedious "spring restart".
My 10 y/o B&S just broke it's con-rod. :o(
What he said. We have a 30" cut, 10hp rideon. It's American, it was £1600 and it's a piece of junk. I'm forever welding bits back on it, it clogs up all the time, the steering was designed by an engineering moron and it makes more noise than a Saturn V.
And it's quite a good one, compared to the others.
I presume this was a safety fusible link of some sort for when the thing smacks into a concrete block.
The horticultural equivalent of replacing a 13A fuse with a wire link?
Christian.
No, juts cheap s**te.
You bend the crank instead. In fact even a steel pin will shear before teh crank bends. You need a proper bolted on cuter to really fick a hard steel crank :-)
The Lord alerted my mind to the presence of this EVIL article by Harry Bloomfield, and I thusly replied:
Hmmm. I'm not sure if I should let that one go.
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