Link to Golf course mowing equpiment discussion

[Az Gardener]

Anyone have a link to Golf course lawn equipment discussion? I need some info on reel mowers and have had no responses on this site.

[Az Gardener]

I did a search and found SWD from central Tx sounds like the guy I need to talk to but his e-mail has been deleted from the server? Any body know SWD? is he still participating? Also sounds like you guys hate reel mowers.

[EGL&L]

Gardener,

You may try Turfnet.net, or GCSAA.org. What info are you seeking? I had plenty of reel mowers on the golf course, and may be able to help.

Bob

[Az Gardener]

I am looking to buy (used) a larger reel mower than the typical 25" and 27" tru-cut and pro masters I have beeen using for years. I have several properties in the 15-25,000 sq ft range and I would like to purchase something a little more efficient. About 5-years ago I had a Jacobson tri king I was never very happy with the cut so I got rid of it. There were always ridges from one reel to the next the company that sold it to me had techs out to try and fix the problem but never could. The lawns looked better with the 27' Pro master thats 20 years old. I have to think the technology is better now and I have a little more money to spend I would like to try again. I am now looking at a Jacobson Greens King 4 with a 62" cut Its a riding greens mower and you can back lap it on the machine. 4500 hours and $$ 7200.00

[SWD]

I didn't know my email wasn't available - probably something I inadvertently altered in my settings.

Regarding your question about reel mowers, I not only like them, you will find that properly maintained they are quite reliable. I should amend my comment a bit - I like well built reel mowers, not the Tru-cut/McClane/residential units.

I have worked on and sold multiple types of reel units for many years so I have a pretty good idea of machines and their respective market value.

The price you were quoted for a GV4, presumably a Kubota three cylinder diesel, is way way way too much. What kind of reels, blade count, are they quick detach, do verticutting units come with the machine, what do the rollers look like/what is their condition/manufacturer - and the questions continue.

At 4500 hours of operation, regardless of the maintenance program, any machine is close to the end of it's intended life cycle.

Call me and I can help you through the maze of used turf equipment buying.

Also check out the following companies.
Bel-Air turf equipment re-manufacturers and/or contact Jim Mullins at Country Club Landscaping in Ohio as he has one of the largest (in terms of volume) used turf sites I am aware of.

I'd recommend you give me a call so I can more fully understand your working environment.

My cell is 830-305-0339.

Steve

[MarcSmith]

We are selling our toro reelmaster triplex. http://www.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?t=120414

we got an artifical field. the machine saw no use this year....

But thats along way to travel for a used mower. Price is negotiable...

[PurpHaze]

We are selling our toro reelmaster triplex. http://www.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?t=120414

we got an artifical field. the machine saw no use this year....

But thats along way to travel for a used mower. Price is negotiable...

Throw in some tickets to the Smithsonian??? :D

[MarcSmith]

Hell I'd put you up in my house for a week and drive you to the smithsonian. BTw the smithsonian is free....but parking is a PITA

I bet I could get you into a couple college parties with some cute coeds...:)

[PurpHaze]

Hell I'd put you up in my house for a week and drive you to the smithsonian. BTw the smithsonian is free....but parking is a PITA

I bet I could get you into a couple college parties with some cute coeds...:)

If my wife didn't kill me the coeds would. LOL :p

[MarcSmith]

what a way to go.....though

[PurpHaze]

what a way to go.....though

Wahoo!!!

Gotta thank Georgetown. About 15 years ago was researching physician-assisted suicide for a speech class I needed to complete my A.S. and Georgetown came through BIG time. This was pre-WWW and you had to do all the serarching through Archie and Gopher. Got a contact number, phoned out there and the gal tells me about all the bioethics material they had. When I'd picked the info I wanted I asked her how much to mail all it to me and she advises "nothing" because Georgetown got fed money to correlate, store and disseminate the information mostly to physicians and to anyone like myself that was in need of it.

I've never forgotten her patience and kindness. Also got an A on that speech and blew away my classmate that had been assigned the "con" part of the issue. All she could come up with was info from magazine articles and I trumped her by using the Internet. :D

[MarcSmith]

glad the school could help you out. I rememebr doing reserch paper before WWW it was a major PITA, but I learned my way around the libraries.

[andy r.]

how much will it improve my greens if i used my groomers on my greens king 5.what is the proper way to set them up?

[Az Gardener]

Andy you will probably have to start your own thread and do't get bummed if you don't get much feedback for a while not too many Golf guys on this site. Thats why I wanted a link to another site where the golf guys hang out. I cant help as I have never used groomers just reels on residential lawns.

[SWD]

What specifically are you looking for as there is a wide variety of good, used reel turf equipment on the market.
Again, I didn't realize my email was unavailable - however - I will dbl ck that my PM is - okay?
Regarding groomer use, it all depends upon turf type/height/cultural inputs/mowing height/and response to the above.
An important factoid to remember - groomers are not verticutters - so don't set them into the soil - they are meant to get down to just above the crown of the plant to help stand the leaf tissue up for a more consistent cut.
Also factor in your bedknife face thickness when setting up the groomers.
Reel mowers aren't hard to set up and maintain - just a bit different.

[Az Gardener]

Calling SWD

I had some $$ set aside for a bigger commercial reel but it looks like I will need that $$ for a truck so we will have to see how that all falls out. When I am in the market for a new reel I will give you a call.

In the mean time we are having a problem of late with recently sharpened reels that won't cleanly cut, we are double cutting to keep the turf looking good.

It is a perennial rye grass and we are only taking off 1/4"-3/8" per cut. We are cutting it at about 3/4"-1" tall. I don't know if its laying over or what. We have tried 4 different reels so it is not machine specific. The reels will cut a piece of paper cleanly so I know they are sharp and adjusted well.

I just don't get it. I have recently switched to a higher potassium fertilizer in the injector to get it to stand up better. I just can't wait for the tiff to come back full strength maybe 1 more month.

[PurpHaze]

Maybe you're trying to cut artificial turf??? :laugh:

[SWD]

AZ, are you slowing down in an attempt to get a better cut? Actually, a better question is what throttle setting are you running at?
Tru0cuts/McClanes are coupled to the reel and rear roller and the rpm of the reel will lower considerably if you slow the engine down in order to slow your ground speed to check your cut.
Probably the single greatest reel problem is your reel to bedknife setting.
Depending upon how many times the reel has been ground, if the bedknife hasn't been replaced than you can end up with, for lack of a better explaination, an overlap or protruding reel.
The reel is actually to far in front of the bedknife, ie the leading edge of the bedknife is not centered under the reel, so when you tip the mower back to check the tension, it will cut, yet when on a turf site, it will cut unevely due to the reel not uniformly feeding the turf across the bedknife.
This is the best I can explain without being there.
When you are ready I have a Toro 216-G 7' wide reel mower that can cut as low as 1/2". I just finished spin and relief grinding and it has new knives as well.
I don't use it anymore as the contract expired on an athletic field, so I ground it and put it away.

[sdwally]

We use triplex mowers as trim out rigs and for mowing small areas. Currently we are using the John Deere 2653A and had not many issues with them. In a side by side comparsion they out mowed the Toro Sidewinder units and were cheaper then the Jacobsen units we demoed. The heavy duty reels can be used as either a right or left hand drive (which side the motor mounts on) and hold up quite well to heavy use where debris is present when mowing.
We use the grooved rollers which tend to collect liquid amber balls :( , however a few of our units are using the poly grooved front rollers available from R&R which don't pick up the balls. Our larger units consist of 5 and 7 gang mowers. If you need some specific questions answered please send me a private message and I will help you the best I can.

[Az Gardener]

We keep the throttle setting the same and just use the clutch to adjust our speed, light touch low speed, all the way in go fast. I will check the bed knife two of the mowers are only a year old and one has already had the bed knife replaced.

Maybe you can answer another question for me. I can't get a consistent answer about maintenance/sharpening. The most reputable place I go they say don't grind just lap them. They are the ones that replaced a bed knife after about 5-6 months of use, the unit was purchased new and only "sharpened" by them. Other places will grind every time but I had a very good Pro-master ruined by one company. I managed to get a brand new reel (probably the last one in the country) and within 18 months it was ground down to nothing, so I quit going there. I found an old guy that is very good but forgetful and in bad health. The latest place seemed to be doing ok but now this. So What is your opinion? By the way thanks for all your help and information, its greatly appreciated.

How does the Toro handle imperfect surfaces at 1/2"? is there a line between the reels or is the cut seamless? Will I get as good a cut with that unit as my H/O models? I have been told that the reason we are not successful mulching here is because the bacteria that break down the grass can't survive our summer heat so we catch everything, I don't imagine this unit has catchers? I'm open to your opinion on that too. Finally how much for the machine?

[SWD]

When the unit is is neutral - meaning the clutch isn't engaged - does the reel continue to spin?
If so, that can contribute to your problem.
In this situation, the reel is heating up and promoting excessive wear on the bed knife. The tolerances are too tight. To adjust properly, use a type of paper that the old punch type time cards were printed on, that or a glossy catalog cover-back cover. Using ordinary paper like a blank piece of printer paper is way too thin for the machine.

Typically spin grinding, which is returning the reel shape to a consistent shape, is advocated approximately once per year - however, this time is dependent upon what you are mowing and the site conditions. I haven't experienced the need to grind more frequently than ever eight months or so and this was during a golf course grow in wherein the crew kept hitting debris, rocks, etc.
The typical process is to spin grind, then grind a relief on the leading edge of the reel, other wise the reel has a leading edge which is much to thick and this will promote accelerated bed-knife failure. Following the spin/relief grind, a new bed-knife is mounted to the bed bar, then ground to be perfectly square on the bed bar so when the knife is reattached, you are starting with two known, square to each other, components.

The difficultly with the Tru-cuts/McClanes is that the bed bar is an integral part of the frame supporting the reel, one good drop or banging around on a trailer, and the bed bar is no longer square to the reel.

The bed bar being a supportive structural member makes manufacturing a much cheaper process, however, it makes grinding and set a veritable pain in the ass. trying to re-true a craned Tru-cut/McClane takes a bunch of time and most shops that offer grinding do it by reel size, not by configuration of the unit being ground. Therefore, the shop is much more interested in turn around rather than corrective measures. This is usually why these machines take so long to get ground is they are so time consuming and are usually regulated to the rear of the line.

By the time the tech gets to your machine the response is usually like Oh no, not one of these things, and you get a rushed grind, no relief, and the machine comes back worse than when it went in.

AZ, how a reel mower with a roller in the front and rear works is that the rollers support the reel, and the height is measured from the bottom of the rollers, across the leading edge of the bed-knife. First one side, front to rear is measured, then the other side, same way, is measured and the rollers have threaded rods with minute adjustments so both sides are uniform to the bed knife.

Some scalping can occur if the raised part of the uneven surface is higher than the distance between the front and rear roller, thereby allowing the bed-knife to come into contact and scalp the imperfection.

Possibly the best reel mower for uneven surfaces is a National 84" belt drive.
The reason is that the reels on this unit do not have a front roller thereby allowing all sorts of grassy weeds to be mown, and it is extremely difficult to scalp using this machine.
The negative point is that at lower heights, say around 3/4" or lower, precise height settings are very difficult and the clip rate of the reel won't allow this low of a height.
A different way of explanation, a greens mower typically has eleven blades, thereby allowing a low height of cut.
Now a unit mowing at a longer height, say 1.5" or higher uses less blades on the reel, spaced farther apart, which allows mowing at a higher height.
The next logical question is why not use the greens reel at a higher height?
The parasitic drag on the reel at higher heights over loads the hydraulic pump motors on these smaller machines causing overheating, premature pump failure and all kinds of hate and discontent.

Actually, as I type this, the thought came to me that perhaps you are trying to get your mower to cut too low, which can also result in the "wash board" effect - actually known as marcelling.
Let me know how many blades are on your reels, less than seven and forget about cutting below 3/4" - and even then you may have the marcelling.

Regarding the 216-G, $2,800.00 will do. It has about 560hrs total time on it - new grind/relief, knives, tires, a seat, plus mechanically it is very sound.

I hope I haven't bored you to death with my response - either way, good luck.

[Az Gardener]

Bored no! Thanks, great information. No matter how much you think you know there is someone who really does know more, I'm always open to a little education.

I believe my reels have either 7 or 9 blades. They don't spin when the clutch is not engaged and the most perplexing thing is these machines have cut great for me in the past. I think you hit the nail on the head with the too close tolerance and heating thought.

The price on your machine sounds reasonable. How about the seamless cut and imperfect lawn questions? How far are you from San Antonio?

[SWD]

AZ, glad I could help.
I'm located about and hour and a half north of San Antonio near the intersection of Hwy's 71 and 281.
Regarding the cut, it is very good but remember, this machine is 7' wide and has three reels.