Disc mower

[farmerjohn]

The Massy, Hesston, and Haymaxx all appear to be about the same as my old Fort Italian made POS.

None of the mowers you mentioned in the quote above use the old oil-bath cutterbar technology like Fort, JD and Kuhn currently use.

The Massey & Hesston are made by New Idea and are the same mowers with parts being interchangeable. These mowers have a shaft driven cutterbar, that is driven by belts.

The HayMAXX is the same as the Vermeer/Lely system. The Vermeer has the Kevlar curtain and the HayMAXX has a standard heavy duty curtain like all the premium mowers have. The HayMaxx has the same shaft driven cutterbar system with some updates, that has been used in the Lely disc mower from the 1980's. The HayMaxx uses the same hex shaft design that Vermeer uses in their current disc mowers.

So what's wrong oil in the cutter bar & gear driven? It's a proven design.

 

[flaboy-]

So Ironpeddler, I understand the oil bath can be a problem if mowing with the tip of the bar elevated but I don't do that. Fla is flat and I don't mow ditch banks with it.

The Haymaxx is belt driven correct? Trying to read between the lines of your post but the print is too small. Do you think the Kuhn and JD are not as good due to the oil bath?

The Massey looks like the parts from my Fort would work on it except for the new modular cutter bar. I kind of like that concept.

What is your opinion of the shaft drive over the belt drive systems?

 

[ironpeddler]

So what's wrong oil in the cutter bar & gear driven? It's a proven design.

A proper internal repair of a oil-bath mower requires disassembly of the cutterbar halves. Yes some on the MFG's have shear shafts so impact damage is hopefully contained outside the cutterbar but that's not often the case. The same MFG's put magnetic plugs in the cutterbar to help collect the metal debris from the oil bath. The oil bath should be changed every season for obvious reasons. If damage occurs internally the oil bath cutterbar the damage is not contained to one gear but usually involves more consequential damage than the original failure.

The shaft drive system used in the Agco/New Idea, Vermeer, Lely & Haymaxx disc mowers has 1/3 less moving parts and 10-20% less weight of the oil bath style cutterbars. Since there are 1/3 less moving parts the shaft drive cutterbars need 20% less power to operate them. When you see that most 3 point disc mowers are used on tractors from 40-60 PTO HP you can understand why operating with less HP and weighing less is a great advantage over the oil bath style mowers. Smaller tractors are more fuel efficient and do compact the soil as much as the larger tractors. These shaft drive mowers use sealed bearings and use EP-0 grease as their gear lubrication. Each individual cutting head has it's own self contained gearbox. Therefore consequential damages are limited to that one gearbox and not flowing up and down a cutterbar like the oil bath style cutterbars. The shaft design does have an advantage in hilly terrain because of lubrication issues with the oil bath cutterbars. We trade for every make of mower out there and 80% of the bearing failures are in the outside 2' of the oil bath cutterbars mainly because of less lubrication of the oil flowing up hill.

We can disassemble & reassemble a shaft drive cutterbar in 2 hours or less. This is not possible on an oil bath cutterbar. Which means less down time & less cost for repairs on a shaft drive style cutterbar.

We have 35+ years experience in selling new disc mowers and have sold & serviced thousands of disc mowers from many different MFG's. We have been selling the Lely/HayMaxx shaft design since the mid-1980's.

 

[BlackBaldyMan]

We run a Kuhn exactly like This one, great machine and is really heavy built we thought compared to newholland, and deere

 

[ironpeddler]

We run a Kuhn exactly like This one, great machine and is really heavy built we thought compared to newholland, and deere

The Deere and the Kuhn are the same machine made by Kuhn.

 

[BlackBaldyMan]

Could have just been me but they looked totally different and the John Deere did not look near as heavy as the Kuhn

 

[vclavin]

Has anyone heard of a Fella brand disc mower?

We've had our SM240 since the mid 80's. Still a mowing fool... sure got our moneys worth on this one. No dealers up here in N Missouri or we'd buy another with a conditioner.
Blessings
Valerie

 

[hayrack]

The Kuhn, Krone, & New Holland are the ones available near me.
Right now I'm leaning towards the Kuhn GMD700/800.

The cutter bars can crack on the Kuhns and it will happen on the 700s and larger most times although I do know of a 600 that cracked. I had a 700 that cracked that I bought new.