Our entire line of equipment includes about 90 individual pieces that total in value of just about a million dollars. Everything from a $50,000 fairway mower to a $200 string trimmer will spend time in the shop this winter receiving all its routine maintenance as well as a thorough check over that usually reveals a variety of broken or worn our parts that require attention.
It is important to realize that most of these machines live a life much more difficult than your typical automobile or home lawn mower. In order to receive maximum hydraulic flow to operate the cutting reels, a fairway mower for example will run at full engine RPM for about 5 hours a day mowing fairways. All told, in an entire season, one of our fairways mowers essentially mows a strip of grass 8' wide and 1,600 miles long at a speed of 5 mph, with the engine and hydraulic pump running at full throttle the entire time. That's a lot of wear and tear.
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| Our two fairways mower are now 7 years old with about 3,000 hours on them. Every winter we put them first on the repair list as they starting to have more and more parts in need of replacement. |
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| Each of the ten cutting units goes on the work bench and is completely disassembled. All bearings are checked, replaced if needed, and reassembled in preparation for grinding. |
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| Bad bearing left, good bearing right. Overall about 30 of the 100 total bearings in all the cutting units ended up being worn out enough that we replaced them. |
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| Lastly, the reel and bedknife receive a razor sharp edge, and are reinstalled on the mower. |
We are just wrapping up all of the general maintenance and repairs to the fairways mowers and the bearing replacement and sharpening on their ten cutting units. Between Collin and I we put about 110 total work hours into just these two pieces to ensure they are ready for next season. We only have 3 1/2 more months to get the other 88 pieces of equipment done now....
May the force be with you.
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