Lawn Mower Sulky?

Can't you just sit on the fuel tank and reach behind you?

dean1484 wrote: How about pay a local kid untill you mend up?

If I could, I would but that doesn't seem to be an option. I started mowing lawns when I was eight. There aren't a lot of kids around here and I never see any mowing. The going rate for a landscaper in the neighborhood is eighty bucks per week, and I refuse to pay an adult that amount when I know for a fact that it's something that an eight year old can do.

Woody wrote: I'm going to look at this in the morning:

And now, I am the owner of a Gravely sulky.

Hitch plate mockup:

Looks great, except you might want to give it a paint job to match the mower.

I rode one of those behind a Gravely mower for a couple hours a week from the time I was 12 until I moved away from home at 22.

My grandfather's sulky looked like the second one in this video with the spokes wheels. Between that and the sickle bar I learned to be very careful.

Hal wrote: Looks great, except you might want to give it a paint job to match the mower.

The color isn't really important to me, and the paint on it is actually pretty nice. The guy that I bought it from sent it out to be media blasted and powder coated. When he got it back, he parked it in his garage for three years and hung his recycling bags from it, as he had two other Gravely sulkies.

I don't like the white hitch though. That may get changed.

So I needed to come up with some kind of hitch mount. The ball needed to come down five and a half inches, but stay as close as possible to the crossmember to minimize the reach to the bars.

I thought that the easiest solution would be to get a thick piece of 6"x4" angle, but the metal supply place is closed on the weekends and they aren't exactly compatible with my inner cheapskate.

I decided to take a trip to Harbor Freight. I didn't expect to find an actual hitch mount that would work, but I was pretty sure that I could find something cheap and made of metal that I could chop up or weld into something workable. Plus, I had a 20% off coupon.

I thought that I might be able to find an ATV hitch, but no such luck. I did however find really heavy ATV winch mount for $3.99. It was a little narrower than I would have liked, but I grabbed two of them and then took a trip to Home Depot for a handful of Grade 8 hardware.

http://www.harborfreight.com/atvutility-winch-mounting-plate-60522-9220.html

Naturally, none of the holes lined up, so I had to do a bunch of drilling, but once it was bolted together, the assembly was nice and strong.

I mounted it to the mower temporarily to figure out where I wanted to drill the 5/8" hole for the ball. The goal was to keep it close to the vertical drop to minimize leverage.

With the hole for the ball drilled, I realized that I would need to trim away some of the excess metal. This wasn't just cosmetic, as I'll need clearance for the main bar of the sulky to drop down when the mower breaks over the crest of a hill. I scribed out an acceptable arc with the help of a Homer Bucket.

In the morning, I'll get out the angle grinder and flapdisc and make it smile.

Broke out the knuckle removers...

Let us know how it rides.

I couldn't be happier with the way that this turned out. Steering is counter-intuitive if you forget that turning happens from the center pivot, but if you put that out of your mind and steer like you're walking, it's a piece of cake. It's even comfortable. I wish I needed to mow!

Come on over to my house, I have an acre you test it on.

Nice!!!! Great fab up of the hitch!!!

I rode a factory built rig like that for the boarding school I attended in 65-66. Looks like the distance from the bars to the wheels was much like what you've done. The bars were more like an old school cruiser motorcycle. I can recall being really worn out after a full day of that during the summer. I had to start it with a rope wound around a crankshaft pulley. It used a horizontal crankshaft Kohler of about 10 hp. I really had to grit my teeth to start it and be careful not to hit myself in the face when the rope came loose.

In reply to dean1484:

Thanks Dean!

Graefin10 wrote: I rode a factory built rig like that for the boarding school I attended in 65-66. Looks like the distance from the bars to the wheels was much like what you've done. The bars were more like an old school cruiser motorcycle. I can recall being really worn out after a full day of that during the summer.

The controls on this machine are incredibly easy to operate. Mine are a little different than this photo, but similar in principle. It has hydrostatic drive, so the only belts are for the hydraulic pump and for the three blades. The hand grips are linked together and rotate like motorcycle throttles: roll forward to go forward, roll back for reverse. The father you move them, the faster you go. To stop, you just let go and the hydraulics stop it. There are no brakes and none are needed.

Steering is counter-intuitive at first, since you're steering with the mower's rear (drive) wheels. When you turn the bars left (as if you were on a slow bicycle) the rear end goes left while the front goes right. If you want to turn right, the left rear wheel is driven faster than the right. It's a little hard to explain, but once you've used it for five minutes, it becomes second nature.

It's not quite a zero-turn, but it's close. You can maneuver it well enough to do most of your trimming with it, in spite of the fact that it has a 54" deck. I have to do very little weedwhacking.

I have used EX-Mark and Scag mowers in the past and they were forearm killers, as you had to constantly squeeze the levers to keep the drive belts engaged (I am sure those brands are better now). There is none of that with this mower. It's really a fantastic system.

The first complete mow with the sulky was a huge success. It took me about five or ten minutes to get used to it but steering and backing up are much easier than I had expected. It's also more maneuverable in small spaces than it has any right to be. There are two hills that I mow sideways and I have to get off and walk behind for one and I disconnect the sulky for the other, but in each case, it's only for two passes. In all, it took about three quarters of the time that it normally takes, and I expect that I can do it even quicker next week. My only minor complaint is that as the mower breaks over the crest of a hill, it becomes a bit of a stretch to reach the bars. I think this can be fixed either by shortening the bottom bar by an inch or two, or by raising the seat. Shortening the bar would be irreversible and would affect several other dynamics, so I don't want to do that. I can raise the seat by adding a shim either under the spring or between the spring and the seat. I'll probably get a longer bolt and put a hockey puck in there. One thing that I can say with absolute certainty is that I wasn't exhausted after mowing and my knees weren't killing me.