My wife and I are no longer capable of weedeating around our lake and we haven’t been able to find anyone that we can hire to do it for us. I tried using my Cub Cadet with the Haban belly mower, but the drag on the mower bar kept pulling the front end of the tractor around into the lake. It took a couple iterations, but I finally made a pull type mower that would do the job. I have 75 lb of weight on the two wheels on the left side, but the bank is steep enough that I still occasionally have a problem. But it sure beats weedeating.
I hauled some “dirt” from the area we feed our cows hay and spread it on the garden with my front end loader. Since the loader didn’t do a great job of leveling the dirt, I thought it would be a good opportunity to use my IH Landscape Rake. It did a good job.
When we purchased our McCormick X1.35 tractor I read through the manual provided by the manufacturer. I found the manual lacking, confusing, and hard to understand. I decided to take pictures and make notes for my own benefit. I eventually wrote all that information as a manual and placed it on my website. Understand this is just my interpretation of the manual and stuff I discovered as I was gaining more understanding of our tractor. I take no credit or blame for the results. Use at your own risk. If you have any additional thoughts or comments, you can contact me through this website.
I built my wife a hydrostatic drive utility Cub Cadet, but she never really liked it and quit using it after a couple uses. I just recently completed a gear drive version that she’s much happier with. Moving the shift lever 31 inches forward was my biggest challenge. The shift actually works even better than I’d hoped.
I’ve been using a 7 foot Massey, Model 41 sickle bar mower on our Massey 1528. I had plenty of power, but the Model 41 just wasn’t made to fit the 1528 and didn’t work very well. So we purchased a Farm Maxx made by Enorossi. It’s a really well built mower and fits our tractor perfectly. I’m really pleased (overjoyed actually) with the hydraulic lift on the cutter bar.
The dethatcher has a universal mount. It bolted to the mule drive on our Cub Cadet.
The spacing between the two mounting brackets is adjustable to make it a more universal mount.
I had to add a lift system so that the dethatcher could be raised for crossing gravel or maneuvering.
The added lift system required that I make a bracket to bolt to the side of the tractor. I modeled the bracket after the one on the Jiffy Balling mower.
There was an angle iron bolted to the top of the dethatcher that looked like it was made for lifting. I connected my cable to it.
The other end of the cable was connected to the tractor’s hydraulic lift. I had to add a “snatch block” to clear the hydraulic pump.
Here’s pictures of our E-Z Rake Dethatcher when we first got it. I hadn’t yet added the lift mechamism. We’ll eventually do some restoration on the paint, but that may not be in the near future.
Here’s pictures of the dethatcher after I added a lift system.
Here’s the pictures after we got the dethatcher repainted. We don’t plan to do a complete restoration.
We’ve been searching for an E-Z Rake Dethatcher that runs off the front PTO of a Cub Cadet. But we’ll have to settle for this engine driven model until we find a sale or trade. It does a really good job of dethatching. I need to get the E-Z Vac out and clean up all the dead grass!!!
The description taken from the SDE brochure is shown below. I would consider the Model 105 but am really looking for the Model 100 driven off the front PTO.
Note: We found and purchased a motor driven unit, but would still like to find and purchase or trade for the Cub Cadet front PTO driven unit. If you have one, or know of one, for sale or trade, please contact us through this website.
E-Z RAKE THATCHERS
Model 105 has its own 4-horsepower air-cooled engine for driving the thatcher. The Model 100 is driven off the tractor’s front PTO. Both are front-mounted, have 37 1/2-inc raking width, 100 rubber-sleeved spring tines, and two 5-inch casters to carry the rake when in operating position. The rake cylinder speed is 470 rpm.
The description of the Montgomery Reel Mower as listed in the SDE brochure:
Reel Mower–MONTGOMERY
Front-mounted, cuts 34-in. swatch before tractor runs over grass. Five alloy steel blades on reel. 1 1/16-in. reel shaft revolves on self-aligning ball bearings. Welded steel frame. Mower engaged, disengaged, raised and lowered with the standard Cub Cadet master control lever.
