Max, I chase all over Vic looking for Victa 24's Deutschers and Ariens, I got a 24 from Port Arlington a Deutscher R36 from Wangaratta, often the round trip costs me nearly a day
Max, obviously a LOT of mowers have come your way over the years. Just curious what criteria you have for particular mowers to go to the "Pool Room"?
At my place anything that can be coaxed to start and make headway through overgrown grass and weeds without belching too much smoke gets a spot under cover.
SupaSwift industrial with echo 2 stroke ,SupaSwift under the Industrial mower it's deck is an end cap off a hot water tank A HG palmer 4 stroke ,a couple of 4 stroke Ambassador mowers , Victa Sheerline .a few sixties Corvette and Cortina mowers, Granberg Parksman 4 stroke stainless base mower,a couple of sixties 4 stroke Turner mowers,Victa 24,a couple Victa 18 mowers, a Wolf Garden with Kawasaki 2 stroke ,Masport with 2 stroke motor.
Norm, I bought a ride on mower from a guy that went to scrap yards buying complete ride on mowers for $50. each, then he would sell them as non runners for min $150. ,he also had tons of push mowers that he fixed and sold , he paid $5. each for them.
A long time ago I would buy V8 motors from importers for $240. and just clean the outside and sell for $500. and they sold quick. I kept one of those engines that I sold recently for $2500. and it needed a full rebuild.
If I spend 4 hours driving I would normally come back with at least 20 mowers.When I was in Melton I saw tons of good mowers in hard rubbish but I wasn't looking to collect anything.
MowingManiac , sometimes I will give away a good running repaired mower or sell one for $10. or $20. just because I don't want to see a rare perfectly good working mower thrown out but usually any thing that's not rare and I can't sell for $50. even if I'd given the mower a service I would rather get rid of the mower straight away by scrapping the alloy base and scrap steel .The mowers I can't get $50. for are good mowers with no damage but a lot of people I've sold mowers to aren't interested in mowers that are more than 5 years old. At one stage I could buy a new ex demo GMC mower with a Briggs from a shop for $100.
I don't really cut grass using a catcher unless testing a mower then I would tip the cut grass back on the ground so I don't really need any rear discharge mowers ,when I started collecting mowers I would just collect side discharge mowers but over the years I've kept a few of the harder to find rear discharge mowers mostly from the sixties and have kept some seventies rear discharge mowers, so I don't have the spare time to fix and sell mowers for $50. or less better to scrap them , I also started off collecting 2 stroke mowers only but have kept some older 4 strokes.
Pool room mowers I'd say are first model mowers like model 1 Rotomo ,first Turner ,Victa auto,first SupaSwift or can just be an old mower that you don't see many of . I've basically just scrapped all the mowers that I could easily buy as a non runners for $10.
Thanks Max, very interesting. I've not seen that type of quality machines when I was picking mowers off the street even though I plundered the leafy well-to-do Melbourne suburbs of Malvern, Armadale, Toorak, Kew, etc. on Hard Waste days.
My latest rescue was a Honda Buffalo HRU 194, probably the only one of my fleet of 20 runners which could be a Pool Room contender. I thought I had more than enough but the allure of a genuine Honda OHV for free was too much to resist. All it needed was TLC and it is doing an exceptionally good job slashing rough stuff, albeit a bit heavy to push uphill. The governor system works perfectly, something I usually disconnect on other machines.
I've never looked for mowers in those types of areas MM ,the Median House price in Toorak is $5,190,000 ,I always find those areas the people will mostly pay someone to take the rubbish away or pay someone to cut the grass.
When I picked up hard rubbish mowers I would find a lot of late model mowers some 3 years old that just needed a spark plug or an air filter clean , all the mowers on the rack I paid for them, except the Victa 24. I would sell the later model mowers and buy / keep the vintage harder to find mowers.
I guess I've never searched areas like Norm gets mowers from as I've never heard of so many straight fueled 2 strokes ,I've picked up a few hundred over the years and only had about 5 straight fueled 2 strokes.
A lot of the time I didn't bother looking for mowers for free as there were a lot of tip shops selling mowers for $10 each.Even when mower shops closed down they would sell old mowers dirt cheap.
I've got the next load of scrap metal to make another mower rack. Last time I bought arc welding rods they were $10 to $15 (pre covid) a box at a shop but as everything has gone up lately I think online they are about $25 now but still around a third of a shop price.
I think this rack will have a few bolts to hold it all together otherwise it's going to get to heavy to move ,if I get rid of a few more mowers this rack would make a good engine rack as the crack shaft on the motors would fit in the square mesh.
I'm going to have to get rods soon Max and during covid my source in Bayswater closed down. I have never had any joy looking for rods on ebay. but my son found 3 brand new never used GIG welding helmets on hard rubbish at the bottom of our street a couple of weeks ago
Yes all the arc rods I've used lately Norm were the Swec in a 2 kg box for $12.98.
If you buy rods in a lot of 1000 boxes they are $4 to $6 a box.
I bought some stainless arc rods on eBay probably 1 KG and they worked well and were cheap but no idea of the brand as they were wrapped in a plastic bag.
I see cheap rods on eBay but I would normally look for a brand that I know is ok.
All the cheap places I knew of for rods have closed ,i think I will just go to Bunnings and get the 2kg of Bossweld rods for $22.98. Maybe I could check a few places that I've been to before but usually find they are no longer there when I haven't shopped there for a few years.
The new CIG welding helmets was a good find.
Just found Sydney Tools has Gigweld 2.5 mm 2.5 kg rods for $24. If any one knows a good brand that's cheap let me know.
I think you'd like West Gosford near where I live maxwestern and NormK. There's a road full of industrial supply sellers like Total Tools, Sydney Tools and at least a couple of independent retailers of welding equipment and supplies who also sell tools. There are two mower shops on opposite corners of a T intersection and a bearing supplies shop opposite them. They are abit dear wanting $7.00 a bearing for ones that fit a Victa wheel. They probably want closer to a tenner now. One mower shop is primarily a Stihl dealer and the other Husqvarna. The guy I've dealt with at Stihl is not very friendly and the Husky dealers were better.
Ahh, if only victa had kept producing the thumblatch catcher series, they would be in better shape today!
It all comes down to cost MF. Last time I went to the local Stihl shop it cost me over $70 for chainsaw sharpening stones from my Cranberg sharpener. Luckily I don't have to go there often
Yep some of the bearing shops are a little dear Mf ,20 years ago it cost me $35, for 3 bearings to fix a drill back then I could have bought a new cheap drill for that.
$70 for chainsaw sharpening stones is expensive Norm as the whole sharpener is only about $140 .
I've heard lots of stories of shops just doubling the price if they sell to someone they don't know that walks in the door.
I was told some mower shops if some one walked in they didn't know and asked for a new briggs motor and they had no stock of engines they just made up a price that was very close to a complete new mower and if the customer said he would buy at that price the shop just removed the engine off a new mower out the back and sold that engine, then later made more profit selling the rest of the mower in parts than they could have made selling a new mower.
If you go to some of the wreckers and tip shops ,the people behind the counter look the buyer up and down and then make up a price that they think you can afford ,so if you wear crappy old clothes you will get a cheaper price.
So I went to Sydney Tools to get some Gigweld 2.5 mm 2.5 kg rods for $24. but they had no stock on the shelf which is normal for trying to get consumables around here at most of the shops , ended up buying italco 2.5 mm 5 kg for $35.
I don't think these rods are as good as the Swec rods but they work ,next time I'll probably go back to Gigweld or Austark, may try Bossweld one day ,after buying the italco rods I found I still had one new box of 2mm x 2 kg of Swec .
I've tested the italco rods on some scrap galvanised steel below.
5kg for $35 is probably not too bad, I think from Bayswater they were $13 for 2kg packs. Doubt I could afford the Cigweld ones they have always been expensive, but they are good rods, I have problems getting the Chinese rods to start, they won't arc up easily but once running they are fine
The italco 2.5 mm 5 kg are E6013 and they only had 2 boxes on the shelf at Sydney tools so probably next time I may not be able to get them Norm.
If the Chinese rods were hard to start I would strike them on the earth lead bolt and start them that way ,once warm they are fine.
The italco rods are DCEP and DCEN , the test yesterday I was using DCEP but today tried DCEN and I seem to be getting a better weld and flow with DCEN (electrode goes to negative)
I think these rods are just as good or better than the Swec rods you got from FJ's Norm ,I just seem to be getting better results with DCEN when welding 2 hardened axles together but I didn't clean the metal first just welded over rusty metal.
I have heard DCEN can work better on Galvanized pipe.
I've been trying to find the 4 uprights needed for the next rack ,found 3 round upright poles to use but have to use one RHS upright ,all I could find was 3 scrap bits of RHS that needed welding together to make a 5 foot length.
The green parts of the 5 foot Upright is 1/4 inch thick and the blue part of the RHS is 1/8 of an inch thick, not sure if I should put the green part down on the ground or the blue part of the pole on the ground , I guess it would depend how strong the welds are to which end of the pole will be stronger ,I'll probably go with the green end on the ground.
Lucky I have an old train line the clamp the metal to for welding otherwise it would distort too much to use.
The second rack is getting there a little slower to build than the first one as everything on this one is built from scratch.
I was going to use the trailer cage as the shelves and have poles to make it all slide together so the cage was not damaged but it all would have weighed too much so have found enough metal to make it like the first rack with the top that will slot in.
The rack is about 11 foot 4 inches long and each shelf is 50 cm high , the width of the shelves is 30 cm.
