Flail Mower Let's talk flail mowers

[Riddlewitz]

Flail Master - Your BEST Choice for Quality Mower PartsFlail Master | Your BEST Choice for Quality Mower Parts

Depends on if you have fine or course cut mowers.

How can I tell please? The PTO driven machine turns backwords to most flails and I believe was called Interstater ? ID plates are long gone. Blades are Y shaped

 

[TheFarmerInAdell]

http://flailmaster.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Flailmaster_Catalog.pdf

take a look at the alamo section of the catalog, it shows the different style of blades for course and fine. Just match up what you have with what they offer. Its really based on the number of "stations", and that's listed in the catalog as well.

 

[ukrkoz]

Is this project likely to take a full day?

Thanks

I have 32 blades stations on my tow behind, 2 blades per station. Took me roughly 2.5 hr to remove>double side sharpen>re mount them. Just swapping sides or replacing will likely take me an hour, now that I know what I am against. I'll just get it up on my scissor lift so I have better access from underneath, instead of laying on the side.

 

[Fallon]

Couple questions

Curious if anyone can recommend sources for blades and how many blades I should buy to handle our pasture/field grass?

I have two working machines both are Mott. One is a five foot Mott PTO drive and the second is a self powered 4 foot Mott. All of the blades are needing replacement.

Is this project likely to take a full day?

Thanks

Flail Master - Your BEST Choice for Quality Mower PartsFlail Master | Your BEST Choice for Quality Mower Parts their website sucks. Have to find & download their catalog or just call them up. They are the best source for good & economical flail parts though.

It took me an afternoon to do my Ford 917. Likely a similar undertaking on others.

 

[JWR]

Couple questions

Curious if anyone can recommend sources for blades and how many blades I should buy to handle our pasture/field grass?

I have two working machines both are Mott. One is a five foot Mott PTO drive and the second is a self powered 4 foot Mott. All of the blades are needing replacement.

Is this project likely to take a full day?

Thanks

Alamo and the third-party manuals people are pretty good about explanatory photos and drawings. On my SHB-88 Alamo the manuals show what the flail knives are like for smooth cut, for coarse cut and then for the heavy cast iron wood cutter knives. Takes time, just study the manuals and it becomes obvious what you have. Not familiar with the self-powered unit but your 5 ft Mott should be VERY much like a comparable Alamo.

If you pull off a couple of the knives on your cutter and go in to the dealer who sells and services them (often for the State Road people) you can compare,match them up and discuss.
For example in north central WV a Deere dealer sells parts for Alamo cutters and has many parts in stock. Seems like Flailmaster is the dominant source via web or phone orders, they are very responsive by phone and you can Google them and find their catalog on-line.

If ALL the flails really need replacement you are in for several hours work but not a whole day. Get the thing up where you can get at the cutters easily and just refine your remove/replace routine to minimize lost motion.

 

[Riddlewitz]

Thanks everyone for the great help. I did call the flail vendor and he also had not ever heard of a Mott tow behind self powered unit with a adjustable height link and shocks on both sides. I described our grassy terrain and he identified that I needed fine cut blades to cut field grass. I ordered enough new blades, cotter pics etc for both machines to have all new blades. I plan on hiring teens to work with me to replace all of these blades. I thought elevating the flails so that we can quickly remove the old blades and install the new ones. I tried to use these old blades for one more season. I should have replaced them along time ago. thanks again

 

[TheFarmerInAdell]

Thanks everyone for the great help. I did call the flail vendor and he also had not ever heard of a Mott tow behind self powered unit with a adjustable height link and shocks on both sides. I described our grassy terrain and he identified that I needed fine cut blades to cut field grass. I ordered enough new blades, cotter pics etc for both machines to have all new blades. I plan on hiring teens to work with me to replace all of these blades. I thought elevating the flails so that we can quickly remove the old blades and install the new ones. I tried to use these old blades for one more season. I should have replaced them along time ago. thanks again

If you have course cut units and you ordered fine cut blades you will not mow very well. There will be gaps between the blades. The course cut blades cover about 2"+ and the fine cut only cover about 1". Unless, that is, you replace your course cut blades with the scoop blades.

Course cut and fine cut mowers look the same on the outside until you look underneath. The course cut and fine cut use a different rotor, hence the gap if you use the wrong blades.

If you have fine cut mower then you need to make sure you get the correct fine cut blades, because there are 2 ways to mount the blades and 2 different blade lengths based on the mounting style. Both fine cut blades use the same rotor, just different mounting styles. If your grass gets longer before you cut I'd recommend the shorter blades with the link and hangers for mounting. If you keep the grass short I would use the longer blades that mount with only a pin.

 

[cscholz]

My new Caroni TM1900 arrived on Tuesday, 1 day ahead of schedule from Agri Supply, but I was not able to bring it home until Saturday. I was not able to lift it out of the back of my pickup with my tractor (I could have, with some finagling if I had put some ballast on), so I called my neighbor and he came over with his 50HP TYM and forks.

He's retired road crew and was very interested in the mower - he used boom mounted flails to trim road sides. He just wouldn't leave - made me get it off the pallet, set up on the tractor, and when the PTO shaft was too long took me back to his place so we could cut it down. Helped me adjust the skid shoes, took off the scraper blade and lowered the roller too. Also topped up the gearbox even though the level was acceptable, at the low end of the range.

So far (a short half hour or so test session) I am totally amazed. This mower has much lower HP requirements than my old RFM. I was mowing thicker/taller grass than I would have ever dreamed of with my RFM, and this mower is a foot wider, and I was able to maintain faster speed (as fast as comfortable on my no-quite-golf-course terrain) except for maybe two small areas where it was super thick.

Link to short video:
https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.ne...=cbad9b53c3548613ff5d457bace41994&oe=5DB7192C

One quick question: he suggested leaving the roller 1" higher than the skid shoes. However I am getting lots of torn sod in the corners, I assume that lowering the roller would help and that would be the normal recommended position (roller and shoes at the same height). I did not find any manual with the mower.

@dnw64 Congrats on the new Caroni. I also got one recently - same model. I ordered it in Feb and it arrived in late May. I've used it for about 4 hours of cutting so far and I am amazed. I've got hilly, rocky fields and it cuts really well. But I did manage to break 2 of the clevis and lost those blades due to hitting rocks. Luckily, I had orders some spares with the new unit, so I swapped them in. At the suggestions I read here, I went ahead and called Flailmaster. JD is sending me a sample set of blades and clevis since they don't have a model explicitly listed for the Caroni. But the suggestion I'd read here a while back was M-100761 Clevis and M-108381 Blades. I should get the sample set in a few days, I'll make sure they fit and then order a full set to replace the factory parts. I have a feeling I'm going to go through a fair amount of these - at least until I figure out where all the nasty rocks are.

BTW, I agree with others - the roller should be lower than the skids. The decks rolls on the roller and the skips only tough when the ground is uneven.

 

[dnw64]

@dnw64 Congrats on the new Caroni. I also got one recently - same model...

Hey neighbor - I live in Rockingham on Parker Hill...

 

[JWR]

@dnw64 Congrats on the new Caroni. I also got one recently - same model. I ordered it in Feb and it arrived in late May.But I did manage to break 2 of the clevis and lost those blades due to hitting rocks. ... at least until I figure out where all the nasty rocks are.

I use both a big old (believed to be Alamo SHD88) flail and a Bush Hog 7ft rotary cutter. Experience so far with the flail is that I learned to stay away from rocks and limbs and woody stuff more than an inch or so thick. The big old Bush Hog will sometime eat up and spit out a head sized rock or a 3" thick limb I ran over without intent. Never hit anything that ever disabled it. The flail is far more fragile than the hog (even though the flail is a heavily made and very solid old machine.) Sometimes you get away with rocks here and there. Sometimes you hit a 2 or 3 inch limb and grit your teeth and get away with it. But if you try that very much you are going to be off to the side repairing the flail mower. Mine is a coarse cut model using so-called heavy duty flails. Does a good job but you just need to avoid rock and limbs using it -- Ones that you could just ignore or not worry about using the hog.