Vermeer TM700 vs Vicon pull type cutter

Each Vermeer cutter unit is sealed with its own fibrex grease lubrication (lasts 20 years) and these shaft drive mowers can be run vertical all day long with no damage. The entire cutterbar can be disassembled and reassembled in 2 hours or less. Less Down time and less repair expense for the shaft drive design is the greatest advantage of the these mowers over the oil-bath designed mowers. The both use the same blade technology so they will mow the same if set properly.

The Vicon has a clam-shell designed oil-bath cutterbar with gears. You would not want to run this design vertically because you would starve the gears and bearings for lubrication. So you say who would run a mower vertical. Farmers with rolling land can be mowing around the side of a hill and that is the same effect. If one gear fails or a bearing fails the entire oil-bath should be drained and changed. Vicon even has magnets inserted to remove the metal shavings from the oil-bath. Vicon even recommends to change the oil. How would like metal shavings in your gear and bearing lubrication? If you fix the cutterbar correct you will have a day's worth of labor to pay for. Simply replacing the pod on top of the cutterbar means all those broken pieces are still down in the oil-bath. Are the in the bearings as well? so you need to split the cutterbar and clean all the parts. The Vicon works but is older technology.

To tell you the truth we live in the mountains and the smallest pull-type mower is 9'2" and is just too wide for farmers to pull down our roads. We tend to sell disc mower caddies because they pull down the road easier. In Iowa even the county roads are wide and Vermeer does not understand an 8' pull-type is the largest that can be pulled down the roads along the Appalachian MTNs. Another reason for caddy is you can wear out a disc mower and purchase another one and mount it on the same cart. If you purchase the pull-type non-conditioned mower you will have to rebuild the mower and that will cost more than purchasing the same size 3-point mower. The old 3-point mower usually will be traded in and it will still have some residual value to be applied on the new 3-point mower and lower that out of pocket cost. Pyramid caddies are $2,000. The Vicon and Vermeer pull-type mowers work well and we are hearing good things about both of them. Our preference is the Vermeer disc mower because of the hex shaft drive. Shaft drive mowers have a 1/3 less moving parts and require less HP per cutting head. The Vermeer TM-700 (9�2�) has a market price of around $9,500. The TM800 (10�6�) is around $10,500. When customers start spending over $10,000 for a disc mower only they usually start to consider the Vermeer MC840 (10�6�) mower conditioner for $16,500. Likely I made the water more muddy but I hope I helped you.