PTO Driven Rotary Tillers

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Has anyone ever purchased a rotary tiller for your small tractor (40-50 hp)? When Quality was around, they carried a brand called "King Kutter" that hooked to the PTO of a tractor and had about 12 tines. Are they any good (the brand, that is)? Anyone had experience (good or bad) with other brands? Any specific trouble spots to look for on a used one?

Thanks - Campfool - So. IN

-- Campfool (campfool@yahoo.com), March 04, 2002

Answers

There's a number of discussions about PTO tillers at www.tractorbynet.com. King Kutter is a inexpensive brand compared to Woods, Howard, etc. They build stuff lighter than some of the others. That doesn't mean that you can't get good use out of the stuff.

A lot of the posters at the other forum swear by the brand. I saw the stuff at Quality and the only thing that impressed me was how fast it seemed to rust.

Kuhn is a more expensive brand but it's made a lot heavier. The tines on a Kuhn for clay soil are forged spikes. Kuhn uses a double level of sheet metal so the outside metal will never be dented from rocks kicked up. Kuhn also uses a gear drive on the side to drive the tine shaft compared to a chain drive on many others.

It still comes down to you get what you pay for, hopefully. But you don't need tp spend the money for a Mack truck if a pickup will do.

Check out the posts on the other website.

-- Darren (df1@infi.net), March 04, 2002.


I bought a BEFCO brand tiller from a neighbor some years back and I think it works great. In fact I'd say its about ready for some new tines. I run it behind my Ford 800.

-- Walt K. in SW PA (kraterkrew@lcsys.net), March 04, 2002.

Be sure your tractor has a slow 1st gear. Tillers need to run slowly through the ground. The N series of tractors come to mind - I hear the stock tranny is too fast to be good with a tiller.

--->Paul

-- paul (ramblerplm@hotmail.com), March 04, 2002.


We have a Kuhn tiller and it works great.. But.. Tillers are really hard on your pto clutch. After so many hours of running a tiller it takes it toll on your pto clutch. Some of the farmers say that your clutch will only last 10-20 hours when tilling. :) Want to buy a nice Kuhn tiller with new tines?

-- shari (smillers@snowcrest.net), March 04, 2002.

I use a Howard Tiller on my John Deere 655 with hydrostatic transmission. I really like the setup - works great. Just make sure you have a grade two bolt in place for a shear pin on the driveshaft to keep from tearing things up when a rock, etc. gets stuck in the tines.

-- Skip in WA (sundaycreek@gnrac.net), March 04, 2002.


There are a number of manufactures who make pto tillers. BTW, A 40-50hp tractor I would not consider small. Compacts 10-20hp would be small. I wonder what your going to be roto tilling with such a large tractor. For large fields a rototiller is going to be VERY slow. A traditional plow and disc would be better. For a garden plot the tractor might be to big. How often will you be tilling? Might be more cost effective to hire this work out. A good 6ft tiller is going to run several thousand dollars. What "quality" tiller you get would depend on what your land is like. If you have many rocks or very hard untured ground then the lower quality units might not survive the abuse.

I have a small 4ft tiller that came with my Yanmar compact but I am not sure I could cost justify one if it didnt.

-- Gary in Ohio (gws@columbus.rr.com), March 05, 2002.


Hi,

Before you shell out money on this tiller, consider your needs. Woods, Land-Pride, and others all make tillers for commercial duty and tillers for "consumer" duty. Most of King Kutter stuff is aimed at the occasional user (at least the stuff I have seen and used). I used a Land Pride (the landscape division of Great Plains makers of some of the largest grain drills in the world) commercial duty reverse tine tiller for our truck farm and nursery business for many trouble free years. It was about 2200 bucks new and I only ever replace tines as they wore out and the drive chain once after several years when it had stretched beyond adjustment. It prepared seed beds and transplant beds on about 15 acres, prepared many yards for seeding and sod, etc. I had a King Kutter mower once and it was completely shot in a year....but we used it every day in the growing season. We ran the tiller on a Kubota L2650 4 wheel drive tractor which is only about 29 PTO HP. The tractor warmed up a bit when tilling in sweet corn stubble or sod, but it never seemed to notice when tilling the less stringy crop residues.

You will get the best bed prep with a reverse tine tiller. This tillers tines rotate against the direction the tractor is moving. Most tillers rotate in the direction the tractor goes.

For truck and nursery crops on a smaller scale, I would use a tiller every time. If you look at a used unit, you would be better served by a well used commercial model as they are rebuildable and have robust castings and stampings. A used King Kutter is like a used walmart lawn tractor. If it has been used hard, then the fundamental structure will not be worth the cost of consumer quality parts to keep it going. All of this is in my opinion and experience and my context is commercial production.

Oscar

-- Oscar (owill@mail.whittier.edu), March 06, 2002.


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