I always found the NH 254 did a very good job of raking and builds nice even, centered rows. IT's only failing as a rake is that if you rake in it's widest position in un-tedded hay, it doesn't clean the hay off the ground in the middle. Also, if you have a light crop or are accostomed to raking much more than 13' of width, then no, it won't make a big row. It's not a huge rake.
It's to be condemned for MANY, MANY things, but the quality of it's raking is not one of them.I've also found it does an acceptable job of tedding if it's put in it's mroe agressive "conventional" tedding mode with the tines locked up to the rotor. That will also help reduce some of the maintenance problems.... Beyond that, it's a nightmare to keep it in parts. I spose if you got one just fully rebuilt in a competent manner that you might fare out alright with it for limited use of under a hundred acres a year... Otherwise, it's cam followers, arms, hangers, cams, wheel bearings and so on. Continously. The last time I did a major on ours it was over 3 grand. IT improved it some but it's still not what I'd call reliable. I have no experience with Kuhn's tedder/rake. I do have a Kuhn rake which I like quite well. Kuhn is generally quite well built, and expensive.
For what it's worth, I think if you're doing any amount of hay you're better off with a tedder and a rake if you need both since you're limited in how much ground you can cover in one day with one machine. We like having 2 machines. The tedder/rake was always a bottleneck for use even when it was working well. Rod
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