A dysfuntional piece of equipment

My new 10' Land Pride Rotary Mower has been on back order going on 2 years now. So I bought a cheap $2600 6' King Kutter to keep the pasture weeds mowed down. A very light use for a Rotary Mower.

Day 1 after buying it, with the tractor engine throttled all the way down, every time the PTO was engaged the shear bolt broke. Put it on its side, no obstructions it spun freely, 90wt oil at the correct level. Finally figure out I can get it spinning by just bumping the PTO lever and getting it spinning and then fully engage the PTO and the bolt doesn't break. SO head into the pasture and make it 10 feet into the tall grass and the PTO Shaft collars both fly apart in multiple pieces. Go to the shop and build a new PTO shaft with heavy duty collars. Put it on and as soon as the blades engage grass and weeds the shear bolt breaks. So I use a stronger bolt than grade 2 and it runs rough as hell but gets the job done. Until the last strip to mow and the Gear Box Flys apart well the entire front of it anyway.



King Klutter and RK both tell me the only way that can happen is if I ran it with out putting the 90wt oil in it. Because yeah I am known for running gear boxes without oil in them.


So I order a aftermarket gear box at a cost of $250 because well, need to mow, not get dicked around by King Klutter and RK.

While waiting for the new gear box to arrive, I went ahead and took the stump jumper off and removed the broken gear box. Getting the jumper off of the splines is either really easy or really hard. Totally depends if the splines were greased good before the jumper was put on in the first place. Not a hint of grease on the splines when I finally got this one off. Had to break the expensive Kano/Kroil out and let it work for 24 hours and then beat the hell out of it around the shaft before it let go.


Got the new aftermarket gear box and installed it and greased the hell out of jumper shaft splines and put it back on. Hooked the tractor back to it, engaged the PTO and it runs like a champ.


I forgot to take pictures but will later. I took the old gear box apart this morning to see what the malfunction was. The top gear is just deformed and in two places there are two teeth together as in the teeth are one tooth with the width of 2 teeth making it a grinder rather than a gear. When those come around they were skipping over the lower shaft teeth and eventually breaking them off or grinding them to metal shavings. I have a magnet full of broken off gear teeth and metal shavings retrieved from the bottom of the gear box. It was also making the outer shaft connected to the PTO wobble up and down. Thus causing the race and bearings to put so much pressure on the front of the gear box that houses them to shatter the cast housing.

RK will do nothing and takes no responsibility for it and says call king klutter, King Klutter denies that it really happened but call Rural King as their dealer service the equipment they sell, Rural King Says call king Kutter because they do not service the King Kutter Stuff and I am like FUCK IT Its a $2600 mower that I have another $600 worth of gear box, PTO Shaft Tube and collars into. And it works now. Just not worth the headache and stress of dealing with any further.

I figure I am $3200 in the hole on this mower with less than 10 hours of mow time on it. I may as well order a slip clutch for the PTO and do away with the shear bolt for another $268. It is a VERY junky low end rotary mower to start with and Whomever at RK assembles the Hitch either can't read and follow instructions or just doesn't give a shit. But they assemble the hitch wrong and the tail of the mower won't lift off the ground. LOL I looked at the King Klutter Mowers at 2 RKs and 1 TSC and every one of 22 mowers hitches were assembled incorrectly. That was actually the first thing I had to fix on the mower. Pretty simple matter of taking it apart and putting it back together in the correct order.

I was about ready to just fork the mower onto the scrap metal trailer and say screw it! But now that I have replaced the junk King Kutter critical parts with quality parts it is actually a fairly decent light use rotary mower. The Slip clutch for it will be here Wednesday and it will be a good mower and worth having around for small patches and as a back up for the 10' when it finally arrives.


I strongly recommend buying pretty much anything other than a King Kutter if you are in the market for a rotary mower. I would have been money ahead buying a used ragged out junk one for $500-$700 and refurbing it than buying a new king Klutter.

 

Bought a disc harrow from Tractor Supply a couple years ago. Pretty heavy duty and does what I want, but none of the bearings have grease zerks and thus in a few years will be shot. Old horse drawn harrow converted to tractor, at least 50 years old, has grease fittings everywhere and bearings are still in good shape. Don't even get me started on the quality of the farm supply help these days. Reached the point that name brand equipment means nothing as they usually no longer make their own equipment. Watch the you tube of the machines making bolts and nuts, often using rebar as raw stock. Made by throwing very thing scrap into the furnace and only God knows what it is when it comes out. No heat treat, no QC, can cut rebar with a shear and bend with a bender, so it sure isn't tool steel. Used to make nuts out of hex stock, show them forging them from round rebar instead.

 

Have an old king cutter 5' had to weld a new deck never had a problem with the gear box.

 

You should contact King Kutter and tell them "this is what is truly needed to make your product viable." They'll probably tell you to pound sand, but one would think they would be damn interested into what failed.

I remember hearing a story about the president of Honda and their race team. They entered 3 cars into some race of significance and took first and second place while the third dropped out due to mechanically failure. When he was told, he simply shrugged off the wins and demanded the third be immediately dissected, find the failure and correct the problem at its source. He could care less about the wins but the failures determined their future.

 

Was the mower made (supposedly) in the US by Union Labor - or China? So hard to tell these days.

EDIT

Looked a bit deeper - from a 2005 Ag Forun

Most, not all but most tractor Implements that are ground engaging are made in the US. Tillers and Finish mowers usually are not. They are usually made in Italy.
Midwest (Kioti), International(WAC), King Kutter, Bush Hog(Great Bend), etc....etc.
All built here. BUT, depending on the company some or all of the following come from China: the steel, gearboxes, gears, blades, cutting edges, ripper teeth, wheels, etc. It is basically an assembly operation that gets done in the states, raw materials come from elsewhere.

 

Leave a bad review and send a few nasty emails. Sometimes that will get em to actually look into it.

 

I work at Rural King, and we sell King Kutter equipment...but I'm not going to tell you that it is quality equipment, nothing new is these days. We do have a good crew in the shop (Zac, Rick and Daniel) who know what they are doing! Always remember, that with anything mechanical, problems increase with the number of parts, especially moving parts! I have a rarely used 6' Woods bush-hog that I bought new 35 years ago, but I wouldn't sell it for love or money cause they ain't making them no more! They make them but they cost more and aren't as good! I need to check the fluid levels, grease it, and run it this fall.
I have a restored Ford 201 6' disk harrow that is as old as I am (it was painted Ford Red). I liked the look of it (it was designed by an engineer who was a frustrated artist) and it was in surprisingly good condition (solid heavy steel construction with only minor surface rust, near new disk blades, and the disk gangs turned easily). As soon as I got it home, I took lots of pictures (thank GOD for cell and smart phones) and started taking it apart. I used a side-grinder to remove all of the bolts, prepped, primed and painted all of the metal (John Deere Green and Yellow), disassembled, painted and reassembled the 4 disk gangs, and using the pictures and a manual put it all back together again (there was a bit of trial and error involved) using new nuts and bolts. It was a good winter project, and now I have a better disk harrow than ANYBODY builds today! Cost, not counting my labor cause I work cheap, about $1,000, and it should last another 60 years! No new equipment is better than well maintained old equipment! My John Deere Tractor is nearing 50 years old, and all of my equipment is 30-60 years old. My farm equipment is an important part of my preps, just as important as food, guns and ammo, fuel, seeds, etc.! With spare parts, rebuild kits, fuel, etc. this equipment should last my lifetime and future generations, if they are smart enough to keep it!

 

...but 2005 was a long time ago, lot of changes in just the last few years!

 

This whole "planned obsolescence" concept has gotten totally out of hand. It's not supposed to break until the day after the warranty runs out. Now it breaks soon as it's off the dealer lot.

 

ALL of my old and restored equipment has grease fittings everywhere, and the manuals ALL recommend greasing before using and again several hours later (around lunchtime or dinner down here). Equipment was built and expected to last back then!

 

That is why you need to get the extended warranty, because it's all cheap junk and it's gonna break!

 

My point is that even in 2005, some 18+ years ago, too much Chinese crap was showing up in the US Ag industry/

 

...and by now it's ALL Chinese crap! That is why I do as much shopping as possible on Ebay, Facebook Marketplace, Esty, etc,. because you get older better made merchandise than you can buy new, and as an added benefit it doesn't help the Chinese economy!

 

Also, people took care of the equipment that they had worked hard to purchase, and that is the reason that so much of it lasted and is still in use today...but if people don't maintain the equipment, it will not last. I remember my Grangfather always checking the car or lawnmower, before and after using them. He also wiped down his tools with an oily rag before putting them back in the tool box where they belonged. People need to reacquire those habits, treat everything like it was irreplaceable!

 

That is a big one now days! A lot of people simply don't maintain anything and honestly really no longer know how to. My old disc and hay rake are 1937 and 1942 Cases with Bushings not even bearings. They have grease fittings on every moving or friction part. You grease them every 5 hours and they will last forever or until the implement rust apart around the grease fittings The Hay rake is ground drive and works with a old school gear box driven by 72 1/2 flat chain, you keep that chain well oiled every 4 hours and it is great let go 10 hours without oil and you will break a link almost guaranteed. No oil in the gear box on it, its packed with grease and the owners manual states lard can be substituted if petroleum jelly is not available. And again inspect and make sure it is picking up the grease into the gears every 4-5 hours.

The old King Kutters were a lot better than what they are cranking out now. The Flex hitch is great in concept but not so much in practice, as far as I can learn. They weld the decks together in the Alabama Factory and the Gear Box, Stump Jumper, Blades, PTO Shafts, tail wheel Assembly and Flex Hitch Assembly are made in China or Vietnam and the mower is assembled in the USA.

 

To be honest I had very low expectations from this mower. Just in from mowing this and it held up very well with the new gearbox and ran fairly smooth. No PTO Joints or Collars flying apart, not a single broken shear bolt. I leave the tall patches intentionally they are clumps of Ironweed that the bees and butterflies love.


Wolf River Apple Trees that the Deer planted with a nice fertilizer coating

Can't complain about the cut now. But is it still a King Klutter with a aftermarket gear box and a PTO shaft built in my shop? Or is it a KING KRAPPY!

IronWeed

 

Only time I ever bought an "extended warranty" the dealer wouldn't honor it. Haven"t wasted money on one since.

 

I have a John Deere Tractor 1954 been working on it---bought it used--- it is so easy to work on and USA made to last made to be farmer friendly. . Have found it is best to buy old stuff US made you can recondition..

 

The best retort is to give them bad feedback, on every online forum, site and social media site available. You'd be amazed at how quickly they will turn around, and offer to work with you, to evade a bad reputation!

Hell, I contacted Burpee seeds on their Facebook account, the complain about a seed packet that contained half of what they said it should, and they gave me $5 online credit, for a seed packet that cost me less than $2!!

 

General sense I have gotten with my phone calls is "We got your money, its not our problem." And well Now that it is a KING KRAPPY MOWER it works a whole better than when it was a king Klutter