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Gator Blade Advice Review
Anyone using Gator Blades ??
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Gator Blade Advice Review
If you go back through the archives there's a fairly long thread about Gator Blades, some love them, some, well, not so much.
Below is a link to an old thread on the subject.
Best of luck.
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Gator Blade Advice Review
For my purposes, they're great. I've done a lot of rough trimming with a push mower; electric fence lines, ditch banks, etc. So I probably go through more push mowers than the average homeowner. Each new mower I start out with eventually pretzels the OE blade. I replace it with a Gator. I've also replaced quite a few push mowers. But I've never had to replace a Gator blade.
//greg//
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Gator Blade Advice Review
I got "Stuck" with a set of them once, only two things they excell at.
1 - Plugging up the deck
2 - Grinding up walnuts that I'm too lazy to rake up, we got LOTS of them.
Other than those two things they are totaly worthless.
Frank.
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Gator Blade Advice Review
Maybe you installed it upside down?. Just kidding. It's a mulching blade Frank. Under normal circumstances, the walnuts should have helped keep the deck clean. Sounds like you used it on stuff that was too wet and/or long. It's most effective when removing 1.5" of grass or less.
//greg//
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Gator Blade Advice Review
Gregg;
Yep, I know they are mulching blades and the principal of how they mulch by keeping the clippings under the deck for a bit longer, but I should have known better than to by them in the first place, why?
I've had Deere mowers for years and think they are great machines, we currently have two 345 riders. They are kinda like the Eveready bunny, they run and run and run but with one flaw. Any Deere deck I've owned don't need anything to keep the clippings under the deck like the Gator blades do, they clog bad enough with even the high lift Deere blades in the early summer when the grass is lush and full of moisture, not wet, just early growth lawn. The walnuts do a great job of cleaning the deck plus it's kinda fun to see how far some of them fly, some of us old country boys are easily entertained.
Frank.
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Gator Blade Advice Review
Interesting. I've found Deere blades to be so substantial that I never considered any replacements other than OE. I had a 317, then a 430, now an X500. Guess that's why I limited my initial response to push mowers.
Having thought about it though, I removed the deflector shields from every one of my JD riders because of clogging. And that was with OE blades. No deflector, no clogging. Given the fact that JD uses high quality blades, I never had cause to replace them with anything other than OE. I guess what I'm saying is that the clogging you describe may quite likely be less a Gator problem that it is a John Deere problem. Or that ANY mulching blade might make the John Deere deflector shield clogging problem worse. I'm guessing that's why the John Deere mulching adapter kit for my X500 costs over $400
//greg//
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Gator Blade Advice Review
Gregg;
Yes, I think the "Gator" type blades regardless of brand would be a problem on Deere decks. My 345's are ten years old so maybe they have a better deck design now. I did notice on some new riders in front of the Deere store that had a garden hose coupler on top of the deck, maybe this is their answer to keeping the clippings buildup out of the deck.
I've used their high lift blades along with the grass chutes hanging on a nail in the shed for quite a while and get along pretty good. It seems that just the slightest wear off the sharp square corner of the cutting edge and any wear off the edge of the grass throwing portion of the blade makes a day and night difference between new blades and blades that look good enough. We discussed here a few years ago about the first half to three quarters of an inch or so of the out end of a blade doing 90% of the cutting and throwing.
Like they suggest using a penny to measure your tire tread I use a quarter to judge my blade wear. If the round off on the end of the cutting edge of a blade has a radius greater than a quartet, the blade is replaced. It does make a world of difference having crisp new blades.
I "Think" my Gator blades were a generic brand, but I do use Deere brand for the good blades.
Frank.
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Gator Blade Advice Review
FWIW, that garden hose connection on my X500 is completely worthless. But back to the Gators, it's an actual company with a patent. Knock-offs might use the word "gator" in their product description. Real property and concepts can be patented, you can't patent a word that's already in the dictionary. But I'm pretty dang sure Gator has a rock solid patent on the actual/original finned blade design. See link below.
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Gator Blade Advice Review
Its thread on lawnsite.com is one of the most vigorous. The site's for lawncare pros, and they seem to like them so much that a common concern is how to adapt them for decks they're not made for yet.
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