Garden Equipment

I bought a John Deere riding mower in May.  It was highly recommended by Consumer Reports magazine and it had high ratings at a couple other sites.  Well, my previous riding mower was approaching 20 years old and more expensive to keep repaired every year.

I bought the previous one (and a cheap riding mower-that-came-before that lasted only 5 years) because I had been mowing lawns with the push kind since I was 12 and was damn sick and tired of it.  I mowed our lawn with a push mower and several local lawns with one for spending money.

I was the eldest son and so responsible for mowing the lawn.  The year I went to college, Dad bought a riding mower because my younger brother simply refused to mow the lawn. 

The immediately previous mower was good.  20 years is impressive.  But it was time for a new one.  I researched everywhere.  It's good, but the tires could be better.  They slip in damp grass a bit.  There are better treaded tires available, and chains.  I might consider that.

But this post is about ball and coupler towing.

My car has a trailer ball.  My 5'x8' utility trailer has a ball coupler.  My 2.5x4' yard cart has a pin attachment.  My new mower has a pin attachment.  I bought a trailer dolly that has a ball so that I could move the empty trailer back and forth to keep the grass growing under it and mow where it was previously.

I decided that was altogether too awkward!  So I found a ball receiver (the coupler the trailer ball goes into) that fit over my small yard cart.  I haven't installed it yet because I haven't needed to use it yet, but I made sure it fit.  I wil have to drill a second hole in the yard card handle, but I know it will work.  So I put a trailer ball in the back onf the riding mower to move the larger utility trailer. 

The trailer wouldn't go that low!  So I went online looking at ball mounting kits.  There are so many kinds.  Interestingly, none were returnable.  Well, I suppose buyers beat them up a lot and then want refunds.  Whatever.

There is a metal plate on the back of my new mower.  There are even some pre-drilled holes for various company attachments.  The farthest apart were 10". 

I found one I thought very stable.  It attached to the lower pin hole and raised about 10" with 2 arms near the top to attach to the rear metal plate (pictures lower down will help).  $70.  OK, fine, but seemed high for simple metal braces.  I ordered it.

I recieved it a couple of days ago.  Assembled it per instructions.  Remeber I said the predrilled holes were 10" apart?  These braces were designed for 14".  Not that they specified that...

I was about to try to pound the braces into shape, when it occurred to me I might get better leverage using my very strong metal bench vise.  I was actually able to bend the metal braces rather easily .  How far each time was a problem though.  I went too far at first and not enough back the second.  And each time, I had to clamp the braces to the hitch and measure the distance between the holes.

I eventually got them to 10".  Took a good 30 minutes.  But I went out to install it with various wrenches and vice-grips. 

That was tricky.  The gas tank is nearly against the back metal plate and it seems the purpose of the metal plate is just to protect the gas tank.  I wasn't try to put metal bolts in where the gas tnk would rub, and access to the back of the metal plate was very limited.

The bottom was open, but the holes were 8" up and I couldn't get my hand up that far holding a bolt.  There was a 1" hole in the side but neither my finger nor tools could reach.  Time to stop and think...

Well, I collect weird tools.  I have a funny flexible grabber.  You press the top and 4 small stiff wires open at the bottom.  I tried that holding the bolt in the grabber part and bending the flexible spring around.  It took 10 minutes of frustration, but I finally got the screw-on part of the bolt through the hole in the mower plate.

The nut has a nylon inside that holds it on.  Which made it nearly impossible to screw on because of the resistance.  I had to use a weird very long-necked plier to finally grab the hex head bolt  while I used a ratcheting wrench to tighten it.  The plier kept slipping off.  It took 20 minutes to tighten that bolt!

So, I went to the right side.  It was worse!  first, the brace hole didn't match the mower plate hole by 1/2".  But I did a "Hulk" and just squeezed until it matched.  And I paid for it later with a muscle cramp.  But you have to do what you have to do sometimes.  There wasn't even a hole in the side.  But, I discovered I could get my head under the metal plate if I held my ears flat.  I did plan that approach.  All my tools were laid out in a line next to me. 

I'm far-sighted.  So my close-up vision is not good.  I had to remove my reading glasses to get my head under the mower and then get the glasses back on.  And it was dim light under there.  But once under there, it was actually easier to get the bolt in (facing outwards) and clamp the hex head bolt with the vice-grips.

The difficulty was that I had get a washer on the outside part and tighten the nylon coated nut with the ratchet wrench by touch.  It kept slipping off, which drove me nuts at first.  Then I realized that I was thinking of the direction to turn it backwards.  Yeah "lefty loosey, righty tighty", but I was looking at it in reverse. 

When I figured that out, things went a bit better.  Got every tightened and scraped my head out from under the mower.  The slight scar on the ear is healing well, thank you...

After that, all I had to do was attach the trailer ball.  Naturally, I had taken the big wrenches back into the house thinking that I wouldn't need them any more.  Fortunately, there was enough friction on the ball attachment so that mere hand twisting tightened it beyond any natural loosening.

The entire assembly is as solid as a rock.

The ball is at a good height for attaching to the utility trailer and the assembly comes with a pin hole attachment at the bottom.  But I probably won't need it (I also bought a ball receiver for my small yard cart as I mentioned above). 

So now I can haul anything around with trailer hitches.

I mowed the lawn today and tried out hauling the utility trailer around.  It worked great!