Would anyone have a belt guard for a 1970s "Heavy Duty" walk-behind slasher mower? The original part number was A10162. I could probably knock one up myself if I can see what they looked like and the dimensions.
Wish I could help but ours is long gone. I’m trying to remember what they looked like but all I can recall with clarity is that the one we had was blue and had that hammer tone style paint. It was fairly simple with no real styling to it. I can definitely remember the rover decal on the front.
Another thing that sticks out is that the Rover was pretty crude when compared with the Deutcher that succeeded it. Probably because the Rover had been worked half to death cutting blackberries and other woody weeds.
Mine is yellow. Yes there was nothing flash about these machines. They were designed simply to get the job done. I purchased one that had been used to mow school grounds for about 30 years. The guard looked like this apparently. I might be able to knock one up myself, but would save a lot of time and trouble if someone happens to have one lying about.
I notice on surviving examples of these mowers, the slasher pulley cover has been greatly shortened and are in two parts, so they are only covering the pulleys. I am not sure if earlier or later models had these shortened versions of a cover guard. It seems more likely that this was the result of operators having problems with the guards and shortening them. Perhaps as a belt got old and started fraying and flapping about, the guards got in the way or simply wore out. I can imagine if belts got old and started running off frequently, operators would get frustrated and discard the guards altogether. The one on my mower has been shortened so much that only the front edge of the original guard remains. It really serves no purpose as the top pulley is exposed.
I am very interested to see that the Rover HD self-propelled slasher was in existence a lot earlier than I had thought. The height adjustment is missing off mine and has holes bored in the axle supports to allow for the height to be adjusted by moving the wheel up and down according to the holes. I mistakenly believed that someone must have broken the lever at some point, but could not see any sign of where it had been attached. I also asked the former owner and he shrugged when I mentioned a height lever. He told me if you want to adjust the height you have to take off the front wheels and put them in a lower or higher hole. I had also incorrectly assumed that the HD was strictly a 1970s machine. It appears the prototype was in existence a decade earlier. This forerunner must have dated from the early 1960s and was painted yellow, not royal blue. It was missing the height adjustment lever, which would be added to later models, and it was also apparently missing any belt guards. Mine has exactly the same rudimentary belt guard on the front pulley as the one shown on the history page. This shows a HD in action in Vietnam in the early to mid-1960s. I learn something new every day. I am now thinking I will not ruin what is obviously an early model HD by adding guard covers that were probably never on there to begin with. I will leave it the way it is. See: https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.au/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/112226.html
