home made mower

Boyce · Feb 25, 2011

Anyone ever have any luck building a powered finish mower to pull? My Craftsman mower deck is worn out, and I was thinking of using it to pull a large 60-70 inch finish mower. I have an extra engine or two and a few quill assemblies, so why not put my welder to use and build a big finish mower??

Anonymous-0 · Feb 25, 2011

I knew a guy that made one out of three brand new 22 inch push mowers. He built a triangle shaped frame, removed the wheels and push handles of the mowers and mounted them on the frame. He put one of the mowers in front, the other two behind it (toward the rear axle). They were mounted with just a little overlap so no skips. It worked well, although he had to fuel and start three separate engines. He pulled it with a John Deere H (I now have that) and mowed a few acres with it.

JT · Feb 25, 2011

if you build much of a mower to pull behind a Craftsman, it will be a short lived thing. Those things are "lawn tractors" and are not designed to pull or push much, trannys are pretty weak. If you wanna build a mower, all well and good, but you will need more tractor than you have.

Anonymous-0 · Feb 25, 2011

It would probably be easier to find a good deck on a compatible mower that someone had run without oil or shelled out the transaxle.

jeffalex2 · Feb 26, 2011

Yep...I did it to pull and old 60" deck behind my Allis B...I used big metal casters I got from TSC and an old 12.5hp Briggs with a gas tank on it. I put a lever on the belt tensioner to engage/disengage the blades. Only problem is how much gas you use. With gas going back up towards $4 gal, not sure how efficient it would be.

Boyce · Feb 26, 2011

I used two push mowers behind my craftsman previously. I used a long 1" square tube to connect the mowers. They were offset to the outside so I had the 44" Craftsman deck, and pulled the two 20" push mowers outrigger style. This gave 84" of cut. It worked pretty well, but was loud as heck! The only other problem was I had to keep the grass cut close or it would stall the push mower engines pretty easy unless I slowed way down. Maybe I'll try that again, and make a gang style with multiple push mowers?

Anonymous-0 · Feb 26, 2011

A guy could always get a few sheep, but they lie.

oldhousehugger · Feb 27, 2011

I built a 60 inch deck which I hung off the front of my Kubota B7500 bucket loader. I envisioned it as a brushhog type mower and it worked relatively decent as such until it got into heavy Bermuda grass. I powered it with 2 spare engines and it had 3 quills. I had a total of 18 hp with both and had them both belted in series and I would play with the throttles till they sounded like they were helping each other.
I had 2 home made swivel mounted wheels out front to keep the blades out of the dirt and a couple on the back for the same reason.
Improvements I thought about making were have the body open to the back to let cut material out faster.
It was a pretty heavy rig for the little Kubota and after I replaced the front wheel reduction castings on it because the aluminum wore out from the weight of the loader, I decided to figure out a different way to mow weeds.
John

home made mower

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