TORO GROUNDMASTER MOWERS

Looking for older Groundmasters---72 inch cut. Some are gas some are diesel. Some have foreign engines-some continental-some have a 4 cylinder Ford. What info. can you folks share with me concerning these. Thankyou....

We had a couple of them years ago at a golf course I worked at. They had Mitsubishi diesel engines and underpowered in my opinion

The first few years the Gasoline was a Continental R-839 engine, if you scrapped the Continental sticker off the engine it said Renault. It was basically the same engine they used in cars for years, the last Renaults that used them in the US were the R-5/LeCar and maybe the Alliance/Encore but they had a 1400CC version, some tell me the 1400 was a bit bigger block and had an additional main bearing. All I know is the engine in the Groundsmaster 72 at work looked the same as the engine in my Lecar but I never had to tear into either one of them to verify. They did offer a diesel early on I think it was a Mitsubishi but I'm not sure as ours was gasoline, the only diesel we had in the shop was a Ford 2000 LCG with a selectospeed transmission. Toro found out the Renault engines weren't that wonderful and switched engine sources but by that time I had graduated college and left the golf course to pursue a career keeping B-52s flying. While I was still at the golf course and heard about the ticking time bomb that was under the hood of the Groundsmaster I was looking at alternative engines and wondering if a used LeCar engine might work. They were a decent unit and had a lot of attachments/tools available but our decks only lasted a couple of years we'd rebuild the deck once and replace at the second rebuild. They were getting ready to trade our GM72 of on a new one but I left before the next year's equipment budget was firmed up. Seems after a while they updated to different model numbers that weren't based on the deck width but I left the industry by that time

Not sure how many or for how long but lots of different Toro mowers carry the name groundsmaster. The ones I operate are a 4000D which is 3 deck and 11 foot wide and a 4500D which is 5 deck and 9 foot wide. Both have a turbocharged Kubota diesel for power.

The Groundmaster 345 had a Ford 4 cyl. gas engine. Had one with 4' snowblower also. The 345 was was a much better machine than the 72. I had both of these. I also had a newer Toro with a Kubota engine and that was a great machine. I can't remember the model. I now use a JD 1435.