lawnmower: 41cm or 46cm

Hello,

Well my repairs to my lawnmower have not been particularly long-lasting, so I am back looking for a new mower. I see that petrol mowers come in 41cm or 46cm width of cut. That doesn't seem much of a difference: is it? Which width is best to go for?

The reviews about self-propelled mowers seem contradictory. I think a variable speed one would add more to the cost. Some reviewers say the single speed ones are too fast; others say they are fine. What is the reality in your experience?

Thanks, Stephen.

Reply to
Stephen
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How long is a piece of string? Ultimately size is related to the amount of grass you have to cut.

Personally I wouldn't bother with self propelled on a 16"/41cm mower.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

I think mine is a 53cm cut. It is driven, but it drives slower that I would cut it so I often just push it, but having the drive mechanism makes it harder to push. My lawn is a reasonable size so the wide cut is good. I would rather have no drive, but if there was no drive, my wife would not like it.

Reply to
misterroy

I have the larger width, it is harder to get in and out of the barn where it lives, but does a nice job, mine is push powered as I like to trot around at speed, my son has the same model but his has power assisted drive, it engages the drive as you push forward and removes the effort of pushing a heavy mower. We have both had self propelled in the past but didnt like the slow speed.

Most of the newer mowers I come across are poor at picking up the cuttings if the grass has any length or is more than slightly damp they clog

Reply to
Charlie Pridham

Depends on the size of your lawn and how strong your arms/back are; on the wider machine you'll notice the extra weight when turning it at the end of each row.

I would always go for self-propelled. Compared with most men I have a short stride but I haven't found single speed ones too fast for me.

Janet

Reply to
Janet

About 5cm ;-)

(you knew someone was going to say that!)

41 is a good general purpose mower and will cope with most situations, but its a bit small for larger lawns.

I don't know, since my old Hayter 16" is a push mower and its the only one I have used extensively. Personally I have never missed self drive on it, since its very light and easy to push. However I can see it would be more desirable on a larger mower.

Reply to
John Rumm

I usually overlap the strips I am mowing by around 5 cms. Otherwise, I miss bits. So the effective cutting width is 36cms, compared to 41cms.

Reply to
GB

Just a couple of other things you might like to think about.

Deck material. Steel decks will rust eventually, a good plastic/GRP deck will last until you do something really stupid. ;-) Mine is 25 yrs old and still going strong.

Rear roller. Not just good for putting stripes on the lawn but also makes it easier to mow over the edges of the lawn as it's easier to stop the mower tipping and scalping the grass.

Horse power. The B&S 3.5 Hp engine is pretty ubiquitous on 16" mowers and does a pretty good job. That said, I was using a 5 hp Honda engined mower yesterday and the extra oomph was nice for longer grass. Personally think that cold starting isn't as good with the Honda engine.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

I used to have a battery self propelled one and it was way too fast. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

Stephen a écrit :

We tried hovers, push electric, petrol and finally the self-propelled. The area and growth was just too much for any of them, but what we found with the self-propelled one was that its drive wheels would slip on any but the shortest and dryest grass. It was not help at all, when it was most needed.

We moved onto a ride on small tractor style which has been absolutely brilliant. Overkill if you only have a small space to do, but quick, easy and reliable for anything bigger.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

With emphasis on the "good"... My Hayter has what appears to be an Ali deck, but the lower rear section is actually plastic. This is fine except for one design feature, where the rear axle is fixed to this with a couple of plates screwed over a notch in the plastic. Eventually the plastic cracks, and the rear axle falls off! I am on my third or possibly fourth rear plastic bit in 25 years...

More power is important if you want to be able to mulch as well.

Reply to
John Rumm

Well I've only known the deck on my old Qualcast Suffolk Turbo. The only crack in 25 years was caused by a big stone being fired up from underneath but there are no fatigue cracks anywhere and it's still structurally sound.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

The otehr issue is how flat the lawn is: Ours has a significant slope, so takes quite some effort to push upward, especially if the grass is long-ish. My strategy is to mow across the slope, starting at the top and working down, but a decent self-powered one could be useful in this sort of situation.

Reply to
GMM

Except that the driving mechanism seems only to be designed to cope with flat lawns. I've got sloping grassy areas and have tried several self propelled mowers; the drive mechanisms have all expired after a couple of years, even the incredibly expensive, so called professional, Stiga.

I've now changed to the cheap, throwaway electric mowers from Aldi/Lidl. They are very light and easy to handle, cut adequately and don't take much longer than the petrol mowers did. Need to get used to cable handling, but it's not that difficult. Probably won't last more than 2 years, but you can buy two of these for the cost of replacing the drive in a petrol mower.

Reply to
Bill Taylor

I have a 20 year old Hayter Harrier that is still working well. Its rear roller drive still works perfectly. It make my sloping lawn a doddle to cut giving the perfect speed (for me) up and down wet and dry. Okay it did need a new drive belt a few years ago. The all aluminium deck has one crack which was caused by a piece of wood jamming on the end of the blade about 15 years ago.

I did cut a friends lawn for them whilst they were on holiday last year with a front wheel propelled machine. What a disappointing experience that was. Once the rear grass box is half full there is not enough weight on the front wheels to give enough traction. Then I tried to mow along a border lower than the lawn, hopeless! The wheel being set wider than the deck made it impossible. The roller on my old Hayter lets me overhand the lawn edge quite easily.

Mike

Reply to
Muddymike

I had a Hayter something rear roller drive about 25 years ago. It was useless as the roller was smooth and wouldn't drive on wet grass. Another insanely heavy machine that was very difficult to control in the wet. Fortunately it got stolen and I bought something better.

Of course there are slopes and slopes, mine are 20-30 degrees.

There are also lawns and lawns, I just want mine to look tidy, but other people want an immaculate mono-culture and the lawn mower requirements will be different.

Reply to
Bill Taylor

A bigger overlap is also a fairly good way of cutting long or wet grass.

If the garden isn't too large I would go for the smaller blade model. Probably they would have the same size/power of engine and the one fitted with a smaller blade would handle difficult cutting better (start of season long grass or cutting when still very wet)

Reply to
alan_m

I bought a 41cm rotary lawn mower with a rear cylinder that I have to push. Because the lawn is not flat I have have wondered whether I should have bought the self propelled version.

I use a Flymo at a different location. The Flymo is much lighter to move about in all directions.

Reply to
Michael Chare

That's odd, the roller on mine is ribbed and grips well even on wet grass, perhaps they improved it between the two.

Mike

Reply to
Muddymike

My throwaway 15" electric mower has done 10 years and still works perfectly! It is now replaced by a 28" ride on, as I hate cutting grass. I made the mistake of buying an auto gearbox model, the gearbox is crap, but it makes light work of cutting 8" grass!

Reply to
Capitol

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