I've mentioned before that when I got "early retirement" from my job as trainer/assessor (it was complicated and difficult to describe what my official job title actually was towards the end, bit of a "know it all jack of all trades because I'd been there so long" and they called it "early retirement" when, more accurately it could have been described as "got rid off because he's costing us too much" (I was on the top of the salary scale and could claim all sorts of expenses when away from base too) Shortly after I left they hired two youngsters at a fraction of what I was probably costing them - but could they do the job? I didn't hang around to help sort it out!
Anyway, having taken the very reasonable package and having my pension enhanced up to the same value as it would have been if I'd stayed 'till I reached 65, I pottered about for a few months but soon got bored, put the word about I was looking for work and very shortly was contacted by a chap I used to liaise with in my previous job. Would I like to look after his gardening squad? and, as he knew I was good with machinery, look after the machines too. Hell yes, I love gardening and even more have been messing about with horticultural machines most of my life, staring with the old, 2 cylinder JAP petrol/Paraffin engine cultivator used in my Dad's market garden (he wasn't a physical man but financed the venture and owned the land)
So I spent the next 15 years looking after a squad of 6 mild to moderately learning disabled gardeners. We mowed grass, lots of it, cultivated allotments, trimmed hedges, strimmed "unmowable" banks, etc, etc. we did this very professionally and charged for our services, we were much in demand and were a major revenue raiser for our organisation.
I loved my days out in all weathers with the lads on the job and lust as much loved the machinery maintenance. The chap who had been doing the job before me was a very good gardener but not much cop with the machines which were old and, mostly, on their last legs. Maintenance was done by a local company but financial constraints meant they were seen once a year or when they became non runners. One of the best things I did was to become friend with owner of the garden machinery workshop and, with his knowledge of parts prices, we did an appraisal of what might be worth spending some money on and continuing to run.
I quickly discovered that the spares setup with horticultural stuff doesn't work like the factoring setup in the motor trade and some parts can be surprisingly expensive. I also found, very quickly, that parts for cheap "DIY" standard stuff is often unobtainable. The first couple of years were quite "busy" with me spending almost as much time fixing machines which were always breaking down and begging management for the money to replace them when they became impossible to repair any more.
By about year 3 and into year 4 I was getting things pretty well sorted out. We had a couple of small "Harry" rotary mowers 16" cut, for going round borders and an 18" Rover for small jobs - private gardens mostly. For the larger jobs we had three 21" self powered Masports. I'd bought one as an experiment after being talked into it at the Royal Highland Show where the salesman was extolling the virtues of their swing blades - I used to make a point of treating the lads to a day out at the show every year as a thank you - These were quite commercially orientated machines with cast iron bore Briggs sidevalve engines and good spares backup. I was so impressed by it's performance over that first year that I junked the old 21" Hondas I'd inherited and bought two more Masports! Those machines were still going strong, used daily through the season, some 10 years later when I retired properly.
For really big jobs we had a Ferris ride on. One of these:
Our's had the V twin Briggs engine which, when it was ticking over, sounded just like a Harley! This was the only machine I really carried over from the inherited fleet and was a real beast of a machine. Operators spent a week with me learning it before I would let them loose on it. Unfortunately the second year I was there I got over confident - it was so maneoverable you could dodge in and around things so quickly - and we were running late on a big meadow that had to be cut for a church event the next day - and i just slightly cut a corner near a wall and caught the wall with the N/S drive wheel. It broke the axle casing but not the axle itself. The mess was awful, all the hydraulic oil drained out and we had to get a wee wheeled dolly to manhandle the machine back out of the meadow onto our big trailer. took it back to the shop and got Jim (the maintenance contractor) to quote for repair but it was hopelessly expensive. I wasn't a popular person for quite a while. The boss authorized a cheaper replacement to keep us going. a Machine called a "Simplicity" which was a mechanically driven walk behind, bit like a Skag, if you know your mowers? but it simply had a differential in the middle of the axle. This meant the wheels were not individually powered so you couldn't steer it as you can a Skag with it's individually powered wheels. The simplicity was an absolute beast to manage on anything but the smoothest of surfaces. A day in the back meadow with it left you absolutely done in! Here's one which is almost identical to the one we had:
What doesn't come across in this video is how it wanted to just go it's own way all the time and you had to be constantly correcting it to keep it going where you wanted it. On the similar Skag, because each driving wheel is independently powered you can steer an control it with the hand controls so very little physical effort is used in directing it.
Anyway, after a year of fighting this machine I thought to myself "Jock, you have dismantled and rebuilt Borg Warner type 35 and 65 gearboxes, rebuilt engines and much more, don't be a wimp, lets strip down the old Ferris and see if it's doable without special tooling and if so let's get a list of parts priced up". So I did, in secret after the lads had gone home. Never worked on a hydradrive before and boy was it interesting. In the end the parts, including a new axle casting, cost about £250 and had to come direct from the U.S. - would cost more today I'm sure - but within 6 months of starting the job and only doing a couple of hours a week on it, the Ferris was up and running again! From that moment on my employer authorized me to do all repairs and maintenance on the machines - I had to provide him with copies of my city and guilds mechanics/technicians certificates for insurance purposes.
Of course we also had strimmer/brush cutters, hedge cutters, leaf blowers (don't bother with sucking them up, but it's very useful to be able to blow them) Teaching people with learning difficulty to use a leaf blower was always a hilarious procedure with both the student and myself often laughing so much we would have to sit down and start again!
Those years were a big learning curve for me. There's quite a lot of not very well designed or made DIY quality kit around. The half crank design we talked about above is very common on cheaper kit and is cheaper to make than a full crank. In my experience they don't last as long but I think that's down to them often being cheaply made with cheaper components rather than the actual design itself and you tend, because of the cost factor, to find then at the DIY end of the market. Personally I steer away from them and they are very easy to identify due to the position of the pull start, However, in their defence, a professional gardener I know well has had one of Ryobi's half crank hedge cutters for years and it was still going strong last time I ran into her. Possibly maintenance is as important as the actual machine itself - horticultural machines tend to be dreadfully abused.
We had a combination of Echo, Kawaski, Stihl and Danarm strimmers, hedge cutters, blowers etc and one "Ideal" branded strimmer with a Kawasaki engine. I bought one of the Echo blowers, one of the Danarm hedge cutters and the Ideal strimmer from them when I retired. all 3 machines were being sold off because they no longer complied with the "white finger" vibration regulations and I've continued for the last 12 ears, since I retired, to use them without any of my didgets falling off!
One really big lesson I learned from all of this is that it's no use buying a machine which is not well supported for spares. If you can't get a new throttle cable, dead mans handle cable, blade bolt/boss, cutting blade, woodruff key for the flywheel (which sheared when the engine backfired?) etc, etc, then don't buy it. My Ideal strimmer is a case in point. All the kawasaki engine parts are available but the strimmer specific parts will be a nightmare if I ever need any. So stuff like the bevel gear head, centrifugal clutch parts, etc. No one I've talked to local to me has ever heard of this "Ideal" manufacturer, although I did find an assistant in Lowe's in Maryland who had heard of it when I was in looking for bits for my daughters mower about 10 years ago!
So, unlike you Panda Nut, we saved a small fortune by keeping our machines running for years, I think the Masports were on for about 15 years and the Ferris and Simplicity were still going right up until the day our parent organisation decided it didn't want to be involved in grounds maintenance any more. The big difference of course was that with me doing all the repair and maintenance it was really just the cost of parts and materials that had to be taken into account.
D'yu know? although I'm well infected with the automotive virus, and especially the Panda strain, I've never enjoyed my work any more than when I was out, with my learning disabled lads, in the fresh air, even if sometimes we were soaked to the skin and smelling of leaf bonfire smoke. My brief period with Firestone on the race circuits runs it pretty close, especially in the excitement stakes, but working with the characters in that squad? wonderful!
