Looking to buy a second hand one soon; getting fed up with mowing for several hours at a time with my current self propelled Honda, only to need to do it again a week later. My budget is around £600-900. Got my eye on the bigger engined Westwood/Countax machines as a lot of the lawn has a fair slope to deal with and I’d like to collect, not mulch. Hydrostatic transmission sounds like less faff, but worried about the reliability at my relatively lowly price point.

Does the singletrack hive mind have any pearls of wisdom to share?

my new mower arrives tomorrow. But much of your requirements differ from mine.

Ive chosen a hydrostatic mulching tractor.

Hydro are less prone to wear and tear in transmission. Mulching because the idea of collecting mown grass in what is basically a field is daft.

Hydro transmission units last well, but are sealed units. If they fail, theres no economic reason to replace them, you may as well by another tractor.

FWIW, this new one comes on the back of 3 yrs out of a £300, 30yr old, s/h Westfield that kicked the bucket this winter.

What have you bought stoner?
Genuinely interested as we have a few acres I need to get to grips with.
Cheers

http://www.justlawnmowers.co.uk/mountfield-1538h-sd-garden-tractor.html

from my LMS

Be aware that Mountfield is owned by the same brand house as Stiga and Atco (and a coupe of other euro only brands) and theyre prety much identical across the ranges just with mark ups for “premium brand” stuff. So the Stiga Tornado, which is the same as the Mountfield save for smarter seat and steering wheel and a B&S engine instead of mountfields perfectly good own engine, is £250 more expensive. Same goes for the Atco.

What did you do with you 30yo old Westwood, Stoner? (I’m guessing that ‘Westfield’ was a typo due to Mountfield, rather than you mowing fields with a lightweight Lotus7esque sports car… 😉 )

Nice looking machine that. Is it a Chinese engine? I’ve a Mountfield self propelled mower with a Chinese engine in it.

Probably not tough enough for our overgrown feild though, tussocks and brambles (bah)
I think I need a rough cut flail mower finding one second hand is a challenge though.

At the moment the old mower is in my workshop having all the non metal stripped off it ready for weighing in.

The engine in the new one is Mountfield own 13hp 7500 series which they also use in units with larger cutting decks and collector models so it’s more than powerful enough for my needs.

Flail and paddock mowers are hard to come by, even at our local agricultural auction.

Took me about six weeks of looking at worn out crap on gumtree to find a decent one. A lot of the older models seem to have huge turning circles too

I reckon at that price point it’s more about bangernomics and finding a machine in good condition rather than aiming for a certain brand/model.

Whatever it is,make sure you can test it cutting, check the blades are straight (by looking at the cut to see there’s no lopsided scalping). Check drive is good and strong, blade brake works, all controls etc.

If you spend more on etesia, iseki etc, your price will likely hold for a long time if you ever resell.

I’ll see your Mountfield and raise you a JD 8)

And that means if the OP is interested I have a clapped out/broken Hayter ride on available. £50?

After having a Westwood and a “cheap” ride on mower who’s brand escapes me,since the late 80’s, we bought a 2nd hand Stiga in 2015 – now we realise that a 2nd hand commercial would have been better all along -does a better job, much easier to drive, gets in to tighter spaces, FAR better built. That said, the Stiga was £2300 (4wd diesel Park Pro )

Think Ive got the same one as Stoner.

Had it two years from new. Got fed up of looking at crap 2nd hand ones.

It’s been spot on.

We have more lawn rather than field though and collect rather than mulch.

OP – local farmer to let his sheep in for a few days?

Right, this could take some time….

We have a lawn that’s just too big to reasonably cut with a walk behind mower, so we started off with a Hayter the same as this which is actually exactly the same as a Countax

It was fine if a little noisy. The hydrostatic started to fail and the whole thing was falling apart so I sold it on eBay and bought this beauty from a local JD dealer

This is a commercial mower that, when new, would have cost >£10k – we bought it with 2000 hours on the clock but the engine will run forever and the hydraulics had just had a load of work done to them and they are like new.

So we now have a diesel engine, power steering, 62″ cut, cruise control and a loader to go on the front. It’s a brilliant bit of kit, but still cost £4k excluding the loader which I bought afterwards!
That said the prices for these machines seem to hold up very well indeed, especially as the new version is not capable of taking a loader. Plus if I wanted to start a lawn mowing business when I retire I’ll have all the gear ready to go 🙂

We now use this mower for the lawn plus two paddocks which total about 2.2 acres, meaning I can sell my big tractor.
We usually just leave the cut grass on the paddocks but sometimes we’ll mulch it mid-season.

Mulching is cool BUT I’ve found that the grass really needs to be dry (which can be a problem early/late season) and you cannot cut much length each time. This is the reason why I bought the big collector system off eBay for the grand sum of £50 last autumn 😈

Just be aware that you won’t get much for £600. JD are nice but my sister has a domestic model and I was a bit disappointed but then I think almost any ‘domestic’ mower would be after a commercial.

I’ve recently moved and the owner left a ride on….a old Husqvarna LT112. I’ve just sent it in for a service, should get it back soon.

It has a collection system with it which I was planning to take/leave off and just leave the clippings for the worms (I did this at our old place with the walk behind with no issues).

There’s a lot of chat above about mulching…is that just simply not collecting the clippings or something more complicated?

*The old owner also left a giant compost heap which has turned out to be a slimy mess of pure grass clippings. I’m still trying to reactivate it using leaves/aeration so don’t want to add to the issue now grass cuttings are not far off.

it is a little more complicated. The deck and blades are slightly redesigned to enourage recirculation in the cutting deck and the finer chopping of the grass. It then drops down into the grass bed and disperses better. But as SB says above it wont work with long or wet grass, in which case all the mulchers also have a side ejection mode.
My mower arrived safe and well this morning and in typical STW car park bounce test it runs sweetly. Nice turning circle for nipping around the willows. WOnt get a first cut in until the weather has passed, but first cut will be just a trim with the side ejector. I expect to make 3x cuts in the first week, a little at a time.

I had a Countax C600H bought from ebay for £900. It worked fine, for a while but rust was getting the better of it. I got a new cutter deck for £400, but that just got me to the end of season 2. Collector was good for long grass, but I really coulnt be bothered with the phaff. Now I’ve fenced off part of the garden (2 acre lawn) to return it to field, and I have John Deer X300 with mulch for the remainder of the time. It won’t cut long grass through – you have to keep it short. Not found an issue in mulching short grass even in December.
If I could have anything, a large diesel JD like above would do the job very nicely and I could cut the field as well.

I want one of these.

[video]https://youtu.be/m7Wt2yv3GDg[/video]

My ancient ride on mower has finally bitten the dust :((. – so I’m in the market for a new one too. Is the john Deere x105 any good, a bit more than I wanted to pay, but I’d like something that will last!

Kubota mower What do people think of this? It’s not got a collector (but hopefully could source one) and is slightly double my budget, but it strikes me as it would hold its value if looked after and running on red would work out as a significant saving over time, too.

Nah….. but I’d put an offer in on this JD 355

Yanmar engines go forever and JD dealer and spares backup is very good.