Swisher Rough cut 52 only cutting one side

[BleedingOrange]

I re-read the first post. I still don,t know if you bought it having this problem, or if it now has a problem, after you have used it for a while. Knowing that info, might help in finding the root cause.

 

[MarDawgVT]

ok I'll try.

It is mostly used by someone else in my family.

I replaced the shaft assembly, at the recommendation of Swisher, when we had some play in the blade and stump jumper. That included the entire assembly with the upper bearing, lower bearing(which was pretty much gone) and the shaft that attaches the top pulley to the stump jumper. Also at that time I put on new blades that I purchased from Swisher and got more involved in the mowing and started talking to Swisher.

So I know that it has had this issue at least since then and most likely since we got it.

 

[MarDawgVT]

Here is my update.

The issue is still unresolved and the Swisher support team has dumped me.

The first person to answer was great, once it got escalated the customer service quickly degraded and has I have been told that "there is nothing that they can do for me" to which I replied that there was nothing that they WOULD do for me.

I was told several times that they would take this up with engineering and I never got a response, I was told that the production manager would call me, they never did.

I was told that it was out of warrantee and I asked them if the life expectancy of their mowers is 6 or so years and they declined to answer that.

Did they invest in trying to solve the issue? - yes they did. Did the follow through and stick with me to solve the issue? - they did NOT. Did I invest my time and purchase all kind of parts? Yes I did.

I would think that they would want to solve this. If this is an engineering issue then that would be valuable knowledge to them, they are no longer interested.

So now I am left with a 27" pull behind rough cut mower, or an 897 pound piece of scrap.

So I will be looking at an AcrEase or a DR. What have all of you had success with?

 

[tomplum]

Too bad there is no resolution on this. Best of luck moving forward.

 

[MarDawgVT]

Too bad there is no resolution on this. Best of luck moving forward.

Thanks,

While the Swisher customer service started well it ended very poorly.

I can only hope that they will reconsider and solve the issue.

I won't be a Swisher customer again unless this gets resolved.

 

[oosik]

You could hope that Swisher would do right by you. Take back your dysfunctional unit and give you a new one. Hell - they might even learn something by inspecting your old one.

 

[MarDawgVT]

You could hope that Swisher would do right by you. Take back your dysfunctional unit and give you a new one. Hell - they might even learn something by inspecting your old one.

That is what I would have hoped but NO!

They told me that if I wanted to pay shipping to their factory they would take a look at it and then I would need to pay for shipping back to me.

I made repeated request to have engineering look at the results and pics I sent but I never got any response to that.

Only that it is out of warrantee.

Is there a NTSB for pull behind brush cutters?

Or a place to put out a review that they may pay attention to?

This is clearly not a setup issue as I have been very careful and so was the professional service center that I took it to that went over EVERYTHING. Which can only point to a design/engineering issue, but swisher is not interested in discovering that.

Or they know what the issue is and don't want it public because that would mean making it right for a bunch of people.

 

[oosik]

Yes - you are right MarDawgVT. I've read posts here on TBN where folks had units that wouldn't cut well. But never a situation such as yours. It almost sounds like the one side is not turning at the correct speed.

 

[tomplum]

Reading what you have replaced, it wasn't clear if you had replaced the stump jumper. It obviously had gotten some good use. Worth a shot? Maybe in the nature of goodwill, they'd cut a deal seeing as though you've had a CAC open.

 

[dadohead]

I'm a retired mower engineer. I'm sorry but your post makes me smile. I haven't visited here in some time but I think I can help you. Mowers are tough to design; they each have a "personality". The guys at Swisher know what is going on... but won't tell you that one of their 'children' is out terrorizing everyone that meets her! ;<)

From your pics, I believe what you're seeing is called "tire track". My Frontier RC2060 rotary cutter does the same thing; any mower that 'impact cuts' can do it. Let's see if any of this runs true:

• Your mower is powered by its own engine; the blades run CW?
• You pull it with a wide tired machine? Lawn tractor? ATV? UTV?
• The uncut section is directly behind the tires of the pull vehicle?

Going forward, the pull unit bends the tall grass forward then mashes it down... twice (front and back wheels). The housing of the mower also bends the grass forward as it enters the cutter. Running CW, the right side of the mower is able to 'back sweep' the grass. This is a huge advantage! It's like shaving your beard against the grain. You may cut yourself with every stroke but you won't have to shave it twice! The left side of the cut is in the 'forward sweep' portion of the cut; notoriously the weakest portion of the cut. Align the 'forward sweep' of the cutter with the 'tire track' region of the power unit and you have the stuff that keeps mower engineers up at night! Belly mower designers try to shift the mower to gain advantage. Zero Turn engineers move the casters to get them out of the forward sweep (really). They also turn up the tip speeds and add high lift blades with marginal success (adding noise and power requirement). Ever wonder why lawn tractors are 20+hp now-a-days?

Is there something wrong with your mower? Probably not. Impact cutting starts at 12,000 fpm. Below that, a mower will just 'comb' the grass. I looked up your model number and didn't see tip speed in the specification. My frontier runs ~15,000 fpm and it still tire tracks. So as suggested; run your mower WOT. Always. Any rear mounted mower has this disadvantage.

"So how do I mow with this thing?" You overlap. My Frontier blades run CCW so the RH side is the weak side (forward sweep). I circle the fields going in CCW laps, starting on the outside... finishing on the inside, keeping the RH side of the mower in the previously cut path. Yup, drives me crazy too giving all that cut width away.

A dozen people may say "my mower doesn't do that!" Maybe not... in their condition. Another thing you learn in this business: grass changes bigtime in different microclimates. I cut my fields about 3x/year cutting ~20" down to 4" in southern Wisconsin. My cut would look like yours if I didn't overlap.

"Why does my neighbors mower cut good?" Mowing Rule #1: you have to compare mowers side-by-side, same grass, same height, same speed, same power unit. You said his mower is a DR... front mount??? I have designed many mowers for the European market. They mow quite different from us (much lower... 1.25" is not uncommon) and the dealers tend to tinker much more than ours. Every dealer has a 'tricked out' super mower that they'd bring out each time you were testing new equipment. When you lined mowers up side-by-side though, in the same grass, at the same speed, at the same height of cut.... not so trick.

This problem has plagued me for years. What does a retired guy do staying up at night thinking about solving the mower/tire track issue??? He builds a mower!

A guy buys a beat up King Kutter 3-point finish mower and converts it into a 6' rotary cutter with 2- CCW 3' swing blades offset so they back-sweep BOTH tire tracks!!!

"Wake up... you're dreaming again!"