Give me convenience or give me death! (Land Rover Lawnmower content)

Keith Tanner said:

Dusterbd13 said:

Woody said:

In reply to poopshovel again :

I have a vision in my head that will allow you to take this concept to the next level.

Find a non running tractor with a three blade mower deck. Remove mower deck and discard tractor.

Weld a flat plate off the front center of the deck and mount a single large pivoting caster under it.

Remove the vertical shaft engine from your tiny existing mower and use it to drive the center blade. Drive the outer blades with pulleys and a belt.

 

You now have a wide, three blade stationary mower that you can drag behind your Land Rover.

This is pure genius!

I wonder if engine power will be a limitation? Too bad it's not a REAL Land Rover with a rear PTO. Maybe it needs nitrous, controlled by the driver. When you hear the engine bog down, you give it a shot of Daddy's Little Helper.

Yes, he should absolutely add nitrous to the lawnmower engine just in case...

if you put a PTO on the front pointed downward can you just make a big weed wacker,

with enough pulleys you could put 3 weed wackers across the front , and not have the problem of your Land Rover   crushing the grass down before you have a chance to cut it......

Think of how a Corvair cooling fan works , just sharpen the fan blades

Pulling a lawn mower is so 2016 !

I love that Keith just did the math!

Miatas have 4:30 gears.....

Keith Tanner said:

Running math, you guys can check me on this.

One of the most popular tire sizes is a 215/70-15, so let's use that. About 775 rotations per mile. That means the pinion shaft will turn 1984 times per mile.

Let's assume our donor has about 55" between the sidewalls, so we'll take a 54" long blade. The circumference of this blade's arc is 169.6", so the tip of the blade will travel 336,577" per mile. Turn that into miles, and the tip of the blade goes 5.31 miles for each mile covered by the wheels.

If we tow this thing at 10 mph, the blade tips are only doing about 52 mph. Boooring. This IS a worst case, if we use a 4.11 we'll get 82 mph at the tips.

Forgot to account for the speed of the rig. At 10 mph, the blade moving forward will have a 62 mph ground speed. Use the 4.11 and tow at 20 mph, now we have 184 mph at the leading tip. Now that's more like it.

Miatas have 4.30s, but they're independent rears. Too much fab work.

We can do better. Don't dump trucks and their ilk have axle ratios in the 6.xx or 7.xx range? Make that blade really spin!

They will weigh more too, to help the tires grip and not just slide. Imagine how embassed ol poopie will be if his hell-mower just drags it's tires around impotently?

Woody said:

In reply to poopshovel again :

I have a vision in my head that will allow you to take this concept to the next level.

Find a non running tractor with a three blade mower deck. Remove mower deck and discard tractor.

Weld a flat plate off the front center of the deck and mount a single large pivoting caster under it.

Remove the vertical shaft engine from your tiny existing mower and use it to drive the center blade. Drive the outer blades with pulleys and a belt.

 

You now have a wide, three blade stationary mower that you can drag behind your Land Rover.

What if he got a running lawn tractor and drug that behind the land rover? Then no caster wheels and additional engine mounting needed.

Edit; at first I was joking but if you took the front axle out and made a hitch on the front to pull it would work pretty good I bet.

Guys, you’re really going about this all wrong. All he needs is a harbor-freight power inverter and about 7 of these mounted like whiskers on a catfish. 

Y'all are thinking way too simple.

Looks as though the free mower is going to require more work than I’d hoped, so we bailed on that and used bricks we’ve found on the property to make a janky fire-pit. I insisted on mud-mortar from the creek, but wife overruled in favor of “fast and dirty” so we could move on to fun stuff.

That's not a fire pit, it's a bonfire pit.

This thread is winning :D 

I had a fire pit like that once.... I hope the fire department does not come to yours.... It may have involved a Kubota a foklift forks feeding the fire however.

Keith Tanner said:

That's not a fire pit, it's a bonfire pit.

True that. *THIS* is the “fire-pit.” It will give its life for “BURNING VAN” on my birthday.

omg.  HOW DO WE COME TO BURNING VAN?!

bluej said:

omg.  HOW DO WE COME TO BURNING VAN?!

Yes, I would like to buy a ticket to your event:  

Wally said:

bluej said:

omg.  HOW DO WE COME TO BURNING VAN?!

Yes, I would like to buy a ticket to your event:  

I think “bring a running lawnmower” is the painfully obvious answer, here.

Actually, Burning Van is a Westfalia meet...

In reply to poopshovel again :

touche.

That ashpile indicated the fire was much too small for the pit.  Did y'all sit on the bricks and toast mashmallows?

Any good (bon)fire involves pallets.  

Wait we need mor roof surfing as it looks like someone was already roof kayaking in those photos. Or take the rover boating. All would be interesting. 

volvoclearinghouse said:

That ashpile indicated the fire was much too small for the pit.  Did y'all sit on the bricks and toast mashmallows?

Any good (bon)fire involves pallets.  

True story. Though campsites get quite upset when your breakfast cooking fire reaches 30ft vertical and scorches the trees. Not sure why.  

At our old boat club, we had 2 rules concerning bonfires.

1.) Must shake the ground when lighting.

2.) Must be visible from outer space.

Our pit was an 8' diameter culvert on end buried 4' in the ground. It would eat a couple truckloads of wood per night.

As much as past performances speak to my love ov fire, I actually berkeleying hate bonfires. I don’t like smelling like I’ve been bar-b-cued. Same goes for cigar stink.

This goofy thing was for the wife, and she was pleased, so mission accomplished.

I do want to dig it out, level it, and add creek-mud-mortar to the bricks at some point though. Also run a pump from the creek to properly extinguish the E36 M3.

We had a couple dozen Mulberry and other scrap trees I'd dug out of the ground that I didn't feel like cutting up or dragging off to the local yard waste collection.  I piled up a few old pallets, a few week's worth of the paper recycling, and all the lumber scraps I'd been saving, doused it with a gin bottle full of gasoline, and after the initial ignition, began feeding in the still-green mulberry trees.

Everything was burned up in a day.  

On the RPM of the blade topic, figure a standard lawnmower direct-drives the blades at the 3600 RPM of the engine.  That's a 21" blade.  I have a cheap Snapper rider with a 30" blade and a 1:1 drive from the engine to the blade via belt.  IIRC my big tractor has (3) 18" blades that spin around engine speed (3600 RPM).  So that's anywhere from 17,000 to 28,000 feet per minute of blade tip speed you should be shooting for.  

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

While I was trying not to sink $$$ into it, this is local, and intriguing:

https://atlanta.craigslist.org/atl/grd/d/walk-behind-ferris-type/6571250583.html

poopshovel again said:

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

While I was trying not to sink $$$ into it, this is local, and intriguing:

https://atlanta.craigslist.org/atl/grd/d/walk-behind-ferris-type/6571250583.html

If you don't have Popeye forearms yet, you will before the end of the summer, but for $250 you need to get that. Or better yet, lowball him.