Its that time of Year. Putting Solid Rollers on Toro Flex 21

Now that the hot weather has arrived its time to put solid rollers on the greens mowers. This helps reduce stress and also helps the greens mowers not dig into the turf.

 First loosen up the roller pinch bolt on each side of the reel.

 Slide the roller to the left and then remove the groomer adjustment nut (if you have groomers).

 Remove height adjuster bolt. You only need to take of one side.

 Slide the height adjuster bracket over enough that roller will clear bracket. Slide out roller. Put in solid roller and put back together in reverse order. Little tip here - tighten height bracket before tightening the roller pinch bolts. This will keep you from bowing adjuster brackets. Which can put stress on reel.

 Now is also a good time to adjust reel and face bed knife if needed.

 Check the contact and adjust until reel cuts paper. I faced the bed knives on all the greens mowers. I just ground them last week so still cutting great.

Very important that you check the height of cut afterwards. Anytime you loosen and remove stuff never assume that the height hasn't changed. The solid rollers are about ..020 bigger than the grooved rollers.

Grinding reel on Toro GM 1000

Now that the drum bearings have been replaced time to grind the reel.

 Ok so 1st thing I do is loosen the spring tension nut.

 Remove bed bar bolt.

 Grinding top face on bed knife. I grind the top face on this bed knife at 5*

 Short video of grinder in action.

 Next grind front face of bed knife. I grind the front face at 5*. This will vary depending on the type of grass you have.

 Mower all set up in grinder. Made sure that my reel wasn't coned. All is good so now time to grind. This Bernhard grinder only takes 2 min on the touch up cycle. It is a lot faster than my old Foley but both grinders have their good points and bad points. We will talk about this in another post.

 Putting bed knife back in mower. Hand tighten the bed bar bolt only Do Not Use impact gun. Next hand tight the nut down so that the washers still turn but aren't flopping around.

Tighten up the bed bar tension spring. You want to bottom out the spring but not to the point that you mess up the spring. Then back the nut of 1 turn. Now set light contact on reel and make sure its cuts paper. Reset height of mower.