Mott--Alamo mowers

[lenray]

These Mott and Alamo mowers with the hammer knives look like very good outfits--rear discharge and are say 6-8 ft. wide.
Ford and JOHN Deere also have these mowers.
Are they all built by Mott-Alamo????
If not are the Ford AND John Deere just as good or better///???
tHANKS FOR ANY HELP.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Not what you are talking about but I have an old Alamo 10' flex mower and that thing has been fantastic. Very heavily built to last.

 

[Anonymous-0]

No! The Ford and John Deere flail mowers were cheap copies of Motts. Compare the deck thickness and blade arrangement. Mott had them patented and only in recent years have other makers copied the blade arrangement. Alamo bought Mott after Mr. Mott was killed landing his private airplane on his farm near Chicago. Mr Mott SR., Elmer I think, invented the flail mower while working as an engineer for International Harvester. He tested the self cleaning properties of the blades in pig manure. He went out on his own because IH wasn't too interested in his new "mower" and the rest is history. My dad was very good friends with the younger Mr. Mott and had been to the factory many times. My dad was the biggest distributor of the Mott Interstator tractor mounted wing mowers that Alamo still makes. He sold over 50 of the units when they came out in the 70's. This was over half of all of them made. They were easy to sell because they are very well built and work exceptionally well for what they are designed for. They can mow down 4 ft. or higher grass in one pass and after demoing this, they basically sell themselfs. Dave

 

[MarkB_MI]

I was told that the John Deere and Ford flails are (or at least were) built by Bush Hog.

 

[Mike M]

I have had some of the older Ford flail mowers and they were pretty good units.

 

[Anonymous-0]

I have a customer that has maybe a 100 of them (highway department) For the treatment some of them get they are a very good unit.

 

[Dick2]

I got rid of all of the Alamo mowers at ADOT and bought Tiger mowers. It is the most rugged mower on the market; we needed those to chop mesquite and ironwood brush.

 

[Gene Davis (Ga.)]

I am on my second mott flail mower in almost 35 years. The first one did not wear out, the blasted IH 154 Cub wouldn"t sell unless it had the mower. That was a useless tractor for anything but mowing a nice smooth lawn. The Mott mower I am using now is over 20 years old and going strong. I have sharpened and reversed the blades several times and will have to replace them this year probably before the next mowing season. I have lengthened and modified the hitch so that it floats behind the tractor instead of the 3 point hitch carrying it. This allows it to follow the conturs of the ground with the swivel/castering wheels I installed on the front. I installed a short vinyl curtain on the front side of the mower and it catches the little bit of grass slung off the front of the blade drum and the long vinyl curtain on the rear catches the cut grass and lets it fall into a smooth band. These mowers need to turn at 22-2400 RPM to give a clean cut and I find it doesn't bog my 650 John Deere compact diesel down as much as a conventional rotary blade mower and is faster One really nice thing about these mowers is that when they hit a bottle,can or rock they do not throw it they simply let it drop back in the rear as you go along. These mowers are something you either love or hate, there isn"t much room for standing on middle ground. They are somewhat different to use from a regular mower and to me leave a nicer finish with the right blade type. There is a company in Tennessee by the name of Flail Master that sells lots of different kind of flail mower parts and blades.