Nova BCRM175 Ditch Bank Mower - 60 day review

[Akdmax]

As much as I wanted this mower to be the ticket all for my trails and ditches, it just hasn't delivered. Ordered 23 May, received 4 June. Pretty good, I was pleased.
Day 1 (6 June) - Put it together without a problem, the instructions aren't all that good but it's pretty self explanatory. Quick look over, greased it, filled the gearbox, and off I go. The hydraulic hose connections to the turning cylinder safety valve started leaking. Tightened them a little bit and the leak slowed, but didn't stop. Shut down, sent an email.
Day 2 - Tightened the connection even more at the suggestion of Jack. Seemed good. It got interesting from there; when I looked it over on day 1 the cotter pins on the protection plate shaft looked kind of small. Sure enough, an hour into it, the cotter pin that holds protection plate shaft on broke. Sending all the protection plates and shaft into the mower. Breaking several hammers and destroying all the plates and the shaft (used all-thread and locking nuts on the replacement shaft and its worked great). Mowed flat and level pasture are the same day and the turning arm snapped. Mower was down for almost 2 weeks waiting on parts from China. During the down time I looked the mower over and found several bolts incorrectly installed. Lock washer on the wrong side of the flat washer, under the head of the bolt instead of the nut, etc. Very disappointed in what I saw, and disappointed that I didn't catch it on the initial look over. Over the course of my limited use I've replaced most of the bolts with grade 8 anyhow.
Received the replacement turing arm and flaps 16 June. Put it together and got a couple hours of mowing out of it. Thumbs up, parked it and moved to other priorities.
23 June - Started experiencing leaks on the fittings that go between the cylinder to the safety valve. Tightened the connections to no avail. After several emails finally got confirmation that replacement parts were on the way...another wait on parts from China, received Jul 12. Got a few days of mowing out of it and now down again. Have a video of the leak but no idea how to attach it. It's about 1-1.5 drip per second from the fitting.
29 July - 2nd turning arm is in bad shape. The mower is off and now it sits again. I'm waiting for a response on an email sent 2 days ago regarding the second turning arm that has deformed to the point that the transport pin cannot be installed, and it looks like it's about ready to break (paint is cracked/krinkled and the turning arm looks deformed from its original shape).
I've gone through 10 hammers in the limited amount of mowing I've been able to do. I've been down about 60% of the time I've had the mower. ~25 usable days vs ~60 days ownership. And I haven't mowed with it every day it's been fully functional either. Been busy laying rock on 1/2 mile of driveway, putting up hay, bad weather, ect. All told, I'd guess I've gotten 5-7 mowing days (20-25 hours) out of it since I've owned it. Grease, look it over, tighten and check bolts before every use.
Customer service has been good from Jack, and I appreciate his help trying to solve the problems. There's a definite language barrier, but he's very helpful. The down time for breaks/repair on this piece of equipment is unacceptable. Would I buy another one? NO WAY!!! I think it will end up at the scrap yard before 2021 is over. I feel this purchase was a waste of $2850. I wish I could return it and buy something more reliable.

 

[K5lwq]

Interesting. I have not had any issues like that with the Victory I have that is probably built in the same factory as the Nova. I also have not seen anything like this from anyone else that has bought a Nova.

 

[Akdmax]

Interesting. I have not had any issues like that with the Victory I have that is probably built in the same factory as the Nova. I also have not seen anything like this from anyone else that has bought a Nova.

Ya, I read a lot of reviews before settling on the Nova. Like I said, I had high hopes for it. Guess it was a bad day for steel and labor when they built mine.

 

[Zeppelin]

I have the Betstco FH-AGL165 version, had a similar issue with the protection shaft, within an hour of using it in grass it ate itself. They sent a replacement right away, got it a few days later and it has been fine since. I did replace the pins with some heavier ones on the new one. All 4 of the connectors leaked when I got it as well, tightening didn't help but loctite 545 sorted it out.

 

[TMGT]

I have the Betstco FH-AGL165 version, had a similar issue with the protection shaft, within an hour of using it in grass it ate itself. They sent a replacement right away, got it a few days later and it has been fine since. I did replace the pins with some heavier ones on the new one. All 4 of the connectors leaked when I got it as well, tightening didn't help but loctite 545 sorted it out.

I have the same mower and also lost half my plates, pin must have come out and the rod slid just enough to allow the plates to come off. Luckily it didn't try to eat the rod but I've only found 2 of the plates so far.....
Guess I should give them a call and see if they'll replace them.
So far I've been very happy with Betstco as far as customer support, they sent out a replacment side shift cylinder right out because from new it was leaking from the gland cap.

 

[Zeppelin]

I have the same mower and also lost half my plates, pin must have come out and the rod slid just enough to allow the plates to come off. Luckily it didn't try to eat the rod but I've only found 2 of the plates so far.....
Guess I should give them a call and see if they'll replace them.
So far I've been very happy with Betstco as far as customer support, they sent out a replacment side shift cylinder right out because from new it was leaking from the gland cap.

I would give them a call for sure, they sent me a new rod and enough plates/washers to get it put back together.

 

[TMGT]

I would give them a call for sure, they sent me a new rod and enough plates/washers to get it put back together.

Glad it might be a warranty item, they already had to send me a pto shaft(wasn't shipped with the mower) and accidently shipped me the tilt cylinder instead of the side shift cylinder that was replaced die to leakage, so now I have a spare tilt cylinder also.

Luckily they have been very responsive and shipped everything out quickly so far.

 

[DieselBound]

Akdmax, get and use some Loctite 545. Clean up the fittings first! And always be careful of trying to over-tighten to seal things as sometimes you go past the point of no return and you're never going to get things to seal up. Here's where cheap becomes a big problem: poor thread cuts makes it hard to seal up.

I had a few issues with my MXZ220 when I first got it.

At perhaps 6 hours of run-time a bolt holding the rotor shaft broke and, fortunately, I caught things before there was any catastrophic failure: it put a dent/bulge in the housing, which is some REALLY thick metal. Chalk this up to someone at the factory not tightening things up properly! The maintenance guide does tell you to check every 10 hrs (which seems silly; I've been checking, and since that initial problem nothing has been loose); I suspect they should tell you to check at ZERO hours! I got several replacement re-slicer bars as several had taken a beating when the rotor shifted in its perch.

I also had the cotter pin holding the guard plates on go missing. Again, paying attention (cab provides mirrors and I use them judiciously) was my reward as I saw the thing walking out. Out in the field what are you going to do? Used a circular key ring! (fortunately I'd had my fuel cap keys on me, not a normal state for me, otherwise I wouldn't have had a fix available!). Design issue. I put a heftier pin in it.

I provided feedback on both issues. Support is great.

I can state that the mower that I have is VERY hardy. Not only did it survive the dislodging of the rotor shaft but it also survived sucking up an 8" diameter chunk of root (almost 2' long, which caused it to totally lock up the mower and kill the NX5510, the first time in some 650 hrs of runtime on the NX5510 that that's happened! [my poor B7800 has been killed so many times I couldn't possible give a number]).

I figure I'm closing in on 50 hrs (and time to change the gearbox oil). Not a single broken hammer: if one were going to break it would have happened. In my mind the only concern is whether the hydraulics/side shift will hold up: I have no reason to believe otherwise; just that it's an added complexity and, well...

I have zero regrets [now] about buying this flail. At first I was having doubts.

As noted above, the recommended maintenance is a bit odd. Made worse is that on the belt side you have to take off a guard and the belt cover to check all of the rotor housing bolts. It's like eight bolts just to get to all rotor bolts! I've resorted to checking a few that I can get to w/o doing all that: I was initially doing all that but never encountered any loosened bolts so now I figure I can get by with just checked the few accessible ones (any signs of these being loosened is when I'll check all the others- next time, however, I'm going to loctite the stupid things! [really, there's ZERO reason to be taking this apart; if there was then it would almost certainly be due to bolt failure from loose bolts!] My NX5510 lost a keeper bolt in one of the lower link arms and I caught that before my rotary cutter jack-knifed into my tractor! [factory or dealer; told the dealer to loctite the bolts, which I did; WHY risk it [who removes the arms? I've put on about 1,700 hrs on two tractors and I've never done it!]

The BCRM has a lot more moving parts. And with anything that's got more moving parts there's just more stuff to potentially go wrong. Law of physics... I recently ran my rotary in order to tackle some really nasty, high grass and found it nice to feel less concerned about whether I'd break it (I DO have stories though!). My flail is more complex and as such it's just a fact that I won't be able to be as care-free with it as I am with my rotary. I adjust my mindset...

Side story on manufacturer quality... My 7' box blade, US made, has hydraulic rippers: at 1,200 lbs it's a beast! The hydraulic cylinder on it is TOTAL crap. It leaks down quickly. I forgot to check on it once and was pushing back into some debris and ended up breaking the mechanical linkage on the ripper bar. A hydraulic cylinder with a check valve in it SHOULD be standard: I struggle to justify the expense when I only occasionally use the box blade (it's main job, which it was purchased for, was completed several years ago).

 

[Jack Yuan]

Ya, I read a lot of reviews before settling on the Nova. Like I said, I had high hopes for it. Guess it was a bad day for steel and labor when they built mine.

Hi, nice to see you here. I m sorry for this trouble happened. I admit this was the fault made by factory. I think you have noticed the difference between the new bracket and the cracked one. This part was not made as how it is designed. I asked the factory mananger to investigate this issue. Then we found out a worker made a very stupid mistake and the QC staff was blind at that time.

Such things often happen in every factory more or less. Life is a roller coaster, I m sorry you got this bad one from us.

Thank you very much for your patience, I will also get in mad if I meet such things.

Anyway, would you like if we recall it sometimes later? We will contact with you soon.

 

[DieselBound]

Jack, as I've noted to you (privately), the factory needs to step up its game vis a vis QA. I've found loose bolts ([either properly tighten then at the factory OR advise all purchasers to go over and tighten/check EVERYTHING BEFORE initial use] which could have resulted in major failure of the rotor) and a stripped drain plug* (also a minor issue with a keeper pin, an issue that I see isn't unique to my flail): the later isn't catastrophic, but it's caused me an annoyance (and I have been too busy to track down a replacement plug- I also worry that the female threads in the tube might be compromised, in which case I will be looking to try and chase the threads first).

* Upon delivery I failed to go with my instincts that the sealer around the plug was a factory hack job (you said all of them have sealer; the pictures on your website show otherwise- also, no mention of this need in the manual).

I decided to post this publicly because I wish for your company to succeed, I believe that fundamentally you have decent products (but without improvement your sales are going to struggle). I also want this to be a heads-up to others who have just purchased your flails (and other products?): again, I cannot stress this enough: had I not been paying close attention and catching when the rotor bolts broke I would likely have had to have obtained an entire new rotor [and all the work in replacing it]).

I've been in manufacturing (a company that produced world-leading products [read: "the best"]). Getting feedback AND acting on it is what makes a good company a great one. Roller coasters are for amusement.