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Re: (ET) In Search Of... Again



David,

I just checked a new-old-stock blade and it measures 18-5/16" long, measuring parallel to the long side of the blade. The ends are almost but not quite 90 degrees - you can see a picture here http://freerangeelectric.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=201 This is a fairly accurate measurement, relative to a hand-held measuring tape, so good enough to determine if your blades are the wrong size.

- Jim Coate
Free Range Electric,
Home of www.ElectricTractorStore.com

On 05/22/2019 7:22 pm, David Roden wrote:
On 22 May 2019 at 16:08, Dean Stuckmann via Elec-trak wrote:

The only reason I can think of for an un-mowed strip would be blades that are too short. I think that would be true for any deck - regardless of the number
of blades it has.

I may not know what I'm talking about, but the few ICE riders / tractors I've had (limited) experience with had blades whose paths overlapped a bit. However, the blade drives were belted together. The belt was set so that the blades were always at right angles to one another. That is, they were timed so they'd never strike each other when rotating. (I guess you hope
that the belt doesn't slip.)

When you have 2 independent motors driving the blades, as in the R36 / ER8- 36 and E8 / E10, you can't time them that way. You have to find some other way to ensure that the blades will never strike each other. The ways I can
think of to do that are by allowing clearance between the blades, or by
setting one blade slightly higher than the other.

If you offset them in height, the cut will be uneven.  Not so good.

If you allow clearance between the blades, you'll have some amount of grass that's missed. That's not great either. Maybe it should only be a few mm,
but there has to be some.

If you have an E15 or E20 with a 3-motor deck, the center blade is farther
forward.  It can (and IIRC does) overlap the others' cuts horizontally.
That eliminates any gap.

You don't have this on a 2-blade deck such as the ones on the riders and the
small-frame tractors.

Now, it may be that my R36's blades are indeed too short. They're what the mower came with when I got it I've been assuming that they were standard factory issue, but I bought the mower used, so who knows for sure? Maybe they're aftermarket blades. But they always leave an unmowed stripe an inch or so wide in the middle of the deck. So I overlap cuts about 55-60% when I
mow.

Really? Nobody else with an R36, ER8-36, or E8/E10 has this problem with
the mower leaving an unmowed stripe down the middle of the deck?


David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA

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Jim Coate
www.FreeRangeElectric.com
Home of The Electric Tractor Store