Merlin1047
Senior Member
One of the goodies I got for Christmas was a lawn cart which attaches behind the mower. I had wanted something with a greater bagging capacity because when the leaves get serious about falling, I can only make one trip up and back in the yard and then I have to stop and empty the bags. Takes forever to clean up the yard at that rate.
To my disappointment, when the cart arrived, it was the old "some assembly required" bit. I took everything out of the boxes and laid it on the floor of the shop. Crap, that was a lot of hardware and I'm not exactly renowned for my mechanical aptitude. But after going through at least half my tools and ALL of my "colorful" vocabulary, skinning every damn knuckle on my right hand - some of them twice, I finally got the cart assembled.
The next trick was to assemble the cover over the support framework. The instructions left a little to be desired. To put it plainly, the instructions sucked. After wrestling with the damn thing for over an hour, I called the dealer, then loaded everything into the van and drove downtown. The mechanic gave me that condescending smirk and allowed as to how the cover assembly was "a little tricky". That's mechanic talk for "Machiavelli couldn't have come up with a more convoluted method". Anyway, after a couple of wrong turns, which allowed me to smirk back at him, he finally got the thing assembled.
Now the cart did not attach to the tractor in the normal manner - that being a single attaching point which serves as a pivot point. Instead, the cart attached rigidly to the tractor by means to two draw bars. Essentially, the cart and tractor became a single unit. Instead of pivoting, the cart was allowed to turn by the action of the two castering wheels which supported it. Oh - and naturally this required that I mount an attaching plate. That meant I had to drill two holes through the back of the tractor and then grope around blindly on the back side trying to get the nuts threaded onto the bolts. It was even more fun trying to tighten them up. More bruised knuckles.
After finally getting everything hooked up, I fired up the tractor and commenced to suck up leaves. Worked just fine. The cart held so much stuff that I got energetic and decided to clean up the side yard which I had been ignoring for a while. I drove in parallel to the fence, headed toward the house. My intent was to turn at the last moment in order to get as many leaves out of the corner as possible. Well, I turned just a tad too late and had to stop to keep from running into the house. Put the mower in reverse and found that I couldn't back up. The cart was hung up in the fence. I had failed to take into account that the cart hitch did not allow the usual pivot during a turn. As a result of being rigidly fixed to the mower, the cart tended to swing wide to the outside of a turn. The consequence of that was what put the cart into the fence.
So there I was, standing there scratching my head, unable to go either forward or backward. So I did the natural thing - I cussed up a storm. Feeling better, I contemplated extrication procedures. Nothing easy came to mind. I found that I was able to pick up the back end of the tractor and the cart and slide the damn thing away from the fence. It wasn't easy and gave me a couple more nicks in both hands.
Having learned this valuable lesson in mower driving, I finished the rest of the damn yard. Did I ever mention how much I HATE leaves? I'm not getting any fonder of them either.
To my disappointment, when the cart arrived, it was the old "some assembly required" bit. I took everything out of the boxes and laid it on the floor of the shop. Crap, that was a lot of hardware and I'm not exactly renowned for my mechanical aptitude. But after going through at least half my tools and ALL of my "colorful" vocabulary, skinning every damn knuckle on my right hand - some of them twice, I finally got the cart assembled.
The next trick was to assemble the cover over the support framework. The instructions left a little to be desired. To put it plainly, the instructions sucked. After wrestling with the damn thing for over an hour, I called the dealer, then loaded everything into the van and drove downtown. The mechanic gave me that condescending smirk and allowed as to how the cover assembly was "a little tricky". That's mechanic talk for "Machiavelli couldn't have come up with a more convoluted method". Anyway, after a couple of wrong turns, which allowed me to smirk back at him, he finally got the thing assembled.
Now the cart did not attach to the tractor in the normal manner - that being a single attaching point which serves as a pivot point. Instead, the cart attached rigidly to the tractor by means to two draw bars. Essentially, the cart and tractor became a single unit. Instead of pivoting, the cart was allowed to turn by the action of the two castering wheels which supported it. Oh - and naturally this required that I mount an attaching plate. That meant I had to drill two holes through the back of the tractor and then grope around blindly on the back side trying to get the nuts threaded onto the bolts. It was even more fun trying to tighten them up. More bruised knuckles.
After finally getting everything hooked up, I fired up the tractor and commenced to suck up leaves. Worked just fine. The cart held so much stuff that I got energetic and decided to clean up the side yard which I had been ignoring for a while. I drove in parallel to the fence, headed toward the house. My intent was to turn at the last moment in order to get as many leaves out of the corner as possible. Well, I turned just a tad too late and had to stop to keep from running into the house. Put the mower in reverse and found that I couldn't back up. The cart was hung up in the fence. I had failed to take into account that the cart hitch did not allow the usual pivot during a turn. As a result of being rigidly fixed to the mower, the cart tended to swing wide to the outside of a turn. The consequence of that was what put the cart into the fence.
So there I was, standing there scratching my head, unable to go either forward or backward. So I did the natural thing - I cussed up a storm. Feeling better, I contemplated extrication procedures. Nothing easy came to mind. I found that I was able to pick up the back end of the tractor and the cart and slide the damn thing away from the fence. It wasn't easy and gave me a couple more nicks in both hands.
Having learned this valuable lesson in mower driving, I finished the rest of the damn yard. Did I ever mention how much I HATE leaves? I'm not getting any fonder of them either.
