Agrifab Mow N Vac

I'll tell you, its all about preparation.

I have 100-150 mature ash, maple, oak, and black walnut trees as well as three or four shagback hickorys. They all shed their leaves and nuts at seperate times.

I have alot of stone walls (over 700 linear feet) and several large planters made of field stone. I simply make it easier for me to pick up the leaves by blowing the leaves near the obstructions out into the open. Also, for areas that are mulch beds (I have one extremely large mulch bed down my driveway), I simply blow the leaves right TOWARDS my stone wall. I then take the hand wand attachment and pick up the leaves against the wall. Total time is about 10 minutes to pick up all the leaves against the wall.

I am a big believer in this machine. I've tried other things in the past, but nothing came close to the performance. I used to spend anywhere from 5-7 hours each saturday mowing and picking up leaves. I now spend about 2-3 hours and my yard is leave free.

That time savings is great since it frees me up to do other things that get neglected usually in the fall.

I have been thinning out my trees at a rate of about 10 per year (mostly ash) that is helping to revive my lawn and save me in leaf picking.

Lee

Lee
I have a 9HP Craftman Chipper Vac that has a hose attachment similar to what you have for the Agri Fab unit. It is quite handy to pick up leaves against fences and areas where to tractor can't reach or difficult to blow the leaves onto the grass. I tried for a brief time to use it to pick up leaves in the rest of the yard but with a 22" nozzle it is just too slow which is why I went ahead and got the Power Flow Bagger which does as good a job as my neighbor's Trak Vacs. Some of the golf courses that are heavily treed use Trak Vacs in the Fall and they are really great for large areas that don't require too many sharp turns. I had my neighbor bring his over to try to pick up acorns and he could barely maneuver the thing around my back yard.

Thinning out your trees will definitely improve your grass since that is what we did in our back. Simply trimming your large trees back a bit to allow more sun to come through will help tremendously. We have had our tree service do this several times over the past 3 years.

Made out like a bandit on an 8hp

Found an add in thelocal rag for a 8 hp Craftsman chiper vac cart. Called up and asked about it (5 days after paper was published) really doubting it was still there. Sure enough it was there. Owner said itwas purchased new in 2000, and has yet to have a full tank of fuel through it. He stated you culd dust it off andput it on the showroom floor and sell it for new. Been stored indooors, and he had to sell it as he was fixing to move by the weekend out of state and could not take it with him. I kicked it around for a bit, as I have a home made vac cart that works fine, but have to make a new deck adapter boot to fit my new trqctors deck, so I figured what the heck, I'll check it out. I rented a trailer for $9.95 and headed to town. Owner was 110% correct in his assessment of this machine. It was just like new. Had to go get some gas as he had it treated for storage and had not used it last year. Dumped in some fresh gas and a couple of pulls and off it went. Smoked a bit and then it cleared up and started to run nice and smooth. No rust, dents or missing parts. So I bought it. Best part was the asking price, $140.00 AS IS WHERE IS as it stated in the paper. I sure woould not have felt good about seeing if he would take less. I gave him the money and loaded it up and took it home. Cleaned up two or so acres of pinestraw and grass and leaves, and its great. Never missed a beat. I was even able to recut the deck adapter to fit my 54C deck on the GX 335, and pickup factory holes to mount the adpater.

Next project on this vac cart is to make a 15 foot extension for remote picking up. I already have an adapter and the hose that I picked up on a dumpster diving trip. 4" in diam and 15 or so feet long, of clear reinforced spiralflex hose. Figure I can make a handle and nozzle from a piece of 4" PVC pipe.

I have to say its super at picking up pinestraw, even with standard blades and no lip extensions. This model has a 3" capacity chipper as well. The chipper basically sucks especially if you try and go to the max capacity, but it does fine on smaller 1 to 2 inch stuff. Green stuff chips quicker and easier. Probaly come in handy to reduce all those rose and azalea pruneings.

The chipper wheel has 6 lift blades. On these blades are 3 sets of flail knives. Each set has three knives to it, for a total of 9 flail knives. On the perimeter pof the housing inside there is a shredder bar, which the spaces between the flail kinves ride, so it really chops up the stuff pretty darn fine. The chipper has 2 blades on a 3/8" thick steel disk.

The wife already had me do a chore for her with it already. She is fixing to make some home made sausage, and she uses hickory chips for smoking it. She uses hickory chips all the time for out door grilling as well, and we usually grill out 5 out of 7 days a week, most of the year.So off to the hickory trees out back and I cut a bunch of limbs, fed em in the chipper, and now she has 4 full burlap sacks of fresh green hickory chips, just the right size.
I think I am gonna like this machine, as much as I do not like Craftsman, this one is pretty decent (its actually made by Agri Fab) So for 5 cents less than $150.00 it was kind of hard to go wrong. The trailer alone without motor or blower is worth $100.

Your model is just like the Agrifab! You should be put in jail for thievery!!

I made my adapter for the hose out of PVC pipe and it worked great. I really like the machine, especially when the leaves come down like they were yesterday. We had 40-50mph wind gusts all day. Alot of branches and other things flying from the trees. This weekend will be a breeze to do the lawn. I will go out early in the AM and do my house, my folks, my neighbors house and then drive it about a 3/4 mile to my sisters house and do her lawn.

The thing as you will see is a serious workhorse. I will be taking before and after pictures this weekend to show you guys what this thing is capable of doing.

I did make two modification to my Mow n Vac. The first was I drilled two holes in the sides of the trailer to accomodate eyelet bolts to use with bungee cords. The bungee cords are great for holding the hose attachment to the plastic top, or holding a rake for raking out the back of the trailer.

The other mod was to replace the sheet metal that is on the back top of the trailer that hold the swivel closures. I replaced it with a thicker steel piece that does not bend or deflect under extreme suction.

I also have made some changes. I also substituted eyebolts for the bungee cord mount,instead of the stud to anchor the mid point of the rear door. Have to check what you are referring to with the piece of sheetmetal at the top latches.

I also added some small pieces of PVC pipe on the side, that allow me to slip a rake or pitch fork into them and it hold the rake etc at a slight upwards angle so it won't fall out. It rides along the side, and keeps rake or fork always handy when you need it.

I sure would like to mount an electric start motor on the thing........talk about getting lazy.......and then a pulley / cable assy to pull the box back down, after dumping it, and then a remote to go to ther back to put the door back on.........yea right.
Anyhow, there are a few places I intend to seal up. I have some liquid rubber sealer as used in aircraft construction, its 2 part and is applied like a caulking from a sealant gun. It lasts forever, and I think it would be good to seal the joint in the middle of the floor, as well as all the other body panel joints, and plastic to sheetmetal joints. Stop a lot of those little p[laces were debris collects and trickle out, as well as take a bit of the rattle out of it.

I used that stuff on my Ford 1720 and it made a world of difference in the body panels, and the metal floor board joints under the rubber mat from collecting dirt etc and getting wet and making rust.

I still think my home made trailer vac has more suction, however it does not shred up the debri like this one does. My homebrew also holds about 2 times or so more, but it also weights probably 4 times as much, just too much to drag around with the JD. I will probably convert it and use it to suck up compost or dry matter from a fixed dump area and blow it into the back of the larger hopper type trailer I have (save me from shoveling it) or perhaps use it to suck out the stuff in the Craftsman vac and blow it around the gulleys I sometimes dump debri into, sort of like a Cyclone Rake power unloader.