Drum mower experiences and possible hacks..

[icehorse]

I recently purchased a 53" drum mower from Titan. I'm still working with them, but my conclusion is that they've been making non-PTO gear for a while and they're pretty good at that, but that they're new to making PTO gear? The reason I say this is that for the last 3 months all I've been hearing from them is that they don't have any parts for the mower they sent me. That seems really bad to me. Sigh.

So I got about 4 hours of cutting done and then the gearbox broke. They told me that "maybe" they will have replacement gearboxes available in 5-6 weeks, yikes!!

So a couple of questions:

1 - I've been looking for a 3rd party gearbox. Two PTO spindles, set at a 90 degree angle, rated for 40 hp. I've found a few 90 degree gear boxes, but they aren't PTO spindles. Does anyone know of 3rd party gearboxes?

2 - Our fields are just two bumpy for the drum mower the way it's set up. I've thought about adding a hack where I suspend it a few inches above the ground. But it seems more common to add a spacer kit or lift kit so that when the bottom of the mower is on the ground, the blades are a few inches higher off the ground. Any thoughts or experience on this?

 

[KSCessnaDriver]

No idea in the gearbox. If it’s too bumpy, does slowing down while mowing seem to help? My fields aren’t perfectly smooth, but the sections that are worse in terms of bumps, I found slowing down helps a lot.

you can put a lift kit on a drum mower, but the bottom of the drum still has to ride on the ground.

 

[icehorse]

No idea in the gearbox. If it’s too bumpy, does slowing down while mowing seem to help? My fields aren’t perfectly smooth, but the sections that are worse in terms of bumps, I found slowing down helps a lot.

you can put a lift kit on a drum mower, but the bottom of the drum still has to ride on the ground.

When I let it run along the ground it sort of flopped around, I know, not a great description. More precisely, the drums didn't stay vertical. I'm imagining that with a good drum mower, the drums sort of follow the terrain but stay pretty close to vertical?

What was your experience with how the drums moved as you cut?

BTW, if I can fix the gearbox or get a new one, I also think I'll do some sort of lift kit.

 

[KSCessnaDriver]

They’re tricky to get set up properly, in terms of being level. I’m not sure what adjustments your particular model has, but for me I watched the following video, and it does a good job describing how to get it how you want it.