i bought the 158 funny top flair mower from Del Morino. you will be in trouble if you ever have to replace the belts. there is no simple way to replace the belts and the instruction manual is useless. No one offer any guidance as to how to get the new belts on the two sets of pulleys

Thanks for the heads up.

 

Morning! Just took delivery of my Del Morino yesterday. Haven’t gotten a chance to get it off the pallet yet but wondering if you’ve got any tips or tricks for setting this up or maintenance, etc that you’ve learned along the way? Appreciate any insight!

 

Welcome for the forum.
Double check the gear box fluid level, I gave a pump of grease to each zirc fitting, and checked the belt tension. Do the same in the spring and you should be good to go. Depending on what you are cutting, it might be a good idea to have a couple of replacement blades on hand.

EDIT: there is a break in procedure in the manual. follow what that says.

 

Double check the gear box fluid level, I gave a pump of grease to each zirc fitting, and checked the belt tension.

I did the same on my Funny Top 132.
You do know that the manual says to run it 15min lifted off the ground to run it in?

Only issue I had was this: the rear roller was mounted on the extensions, so for the initial run I moved it to the spot near the rear of the mower. Bad idea, first few feet the blades literally dug up the ground with the mower being level. No idea why that is, shouldn't be, it's not an in-ground implement. I had to tilt it way back with the top link to get an acceptable cut height. That, however, exposed a lot of the open front, which I deemed too dangerous.
I then re-installed the extensions to give it more height at the rear, which works well regarding cutting height. However, it seems that the extensions, which are a slight S-Shape to accommodate for the width of the casing, did not bend in enough. That resulted in the roller popping out of it's bearings within the first half hour or so. I fixed it by installing a washer between the case and the extensions, so they would come in more. That has worked well so far.

So if you mount the roller directly to the mower without the extensions, lower it to the ground, level it out and then see how far the blades are from the ground.

Also, I totally like the manual side-shift, but you need to make sure the mower is level (via top-link) if you want to move it, otherwise the weight of the mower is on the pins, making them impossible to remove (and you'd have to actually lift the mower up to move the side-shift).

 

Perfect, thank you for the advice! I actually bought a half a dozen replacements when I ordered in case - looking forward to turning this thing loose.

 

This is great info - I’ve not even got it out of the wrapper yet, but I’ll take a dive into the manual as soon as I do. I really appreciate the insight here, hoping it will make things as seamless as possible.

 

Good luck!
If yours came the way mine did, when you remove the wrapper you'll find that it sits in a custom metal crate. Well, more like a kind of rack.
To get the mower out of that, attach it to the tractor, lift it up, and then you can wriggle the rack out from under it.

Mine even came with bushings for the iMatch, works great and fits well. Didn't even have to cut the PTO shaft (with flail mowers, the shaft is rather long and so has a lot of adjustment length)

But you'll be happy with it, I mowed some overgrown ugly corner on our property with small trees (0.5" diameter or so) and it didn't even flinch.
I have the hammer blades.

But, it needs to be said, it's not a finish mower that has wheels in the front and the back which would provide a consistent mowing height. Which means that the mowing height, which can be adjusted by tilting the mower via the top link (in addition to the rear roller height), varies depending on terrain. Especially when going uphill and the terrain levels out, or when going from level terrain to downhill, the geometry of the rear rollers and the tractor's rear axle changes, and mowing height decreases. Same when going from level to uphill, it'll increase. I've scalped some areas of my lawn (zero-turn was in the shop, so I used the flail) on accident.
So for pastures and overgrown fields, great, to mow a lawn at 2-3", not so much. Plus, it doesn't mulch very well, so it left quite some windrows.

 

Very interesting, thank you! I but 5 acres of property and am currently building a home. The property is overrun with weeds and sumac at the moment. I’ve had it professionally “mulched” with a rotary forestry drum, and now it will be sprayed (e.g. nuked) here in about 10 days. My goal is to knock it down after the spray/before winter. From there I intend to plant native grasses, wildflowers, etc and “prairie” most of it. I’m hoping to only mow once a year before winter so I’m hoping this will be nearly perfect. I’ve also grabbed a box blade to try to pick up as much of the mulch as reasonable!

 

I'm not sure a box blade is the right tool to pick up mulch. I'm thinking that a rake would be much better at it.
But if it's been wilderness before, woody "weeds", whatever they may be, will still have roots in the ground, and will come up again. Chemical Nuking will only work if they have leaves.
I would use a selective herbicide in any case, and not Glyphosate, to preserve any grasses you already have.

 

I don’t know that there is a single blade of healthy grass in the entire 5 acres. We’ve let the woody weeds come back up, will spray now - and wait at least 10 days to mow down (probably longer though). I decided on the box blade as a bit of a compromise, I need to smooth a bit of earth, and probably get some of the roots up - so we will see how the box blade does.

 

Also curious about the quick attach, GoodWorks (who I purchased from) states it’s not QH compatible - will need to do some investigating.

 

No need. I got mine from GWT, too, and it came with the QH bushings (it attaches outside of the flanges instead of in between them like a standard 3-point would).
With those, it fits the iMatch. You may need to adjust the top hook, though, but I have that with most attachments.

 

Do any of you have pics of the mower with the quick hitch bushing fitted? I'm wondering if the design changed from older models.

 

It's nothing special, really, but I can see if I can snap a picture.
But you can see it in the manual here as well, page 14.
The regular hitch goes in between the two flanges, but the QH extends the bolt outside the flanges, where the bushings are hammered in.

 

Here you go, hope that helps.

 

Not to resurrect a thread that's almost a year old - but as an update for anyone else with a del marino that was an early adopter (or I guess IBEX now too) - I had the original model that was not quick-hitch compatible. I was able to order just the mount from Good Works and swap it out in about 10 minutes.

 

yeah, the only thing now is that (at least for mine bought a year ago) they didn't think about the floating top link, Maschio did, it seems.
They're now offering a hitch component with an elongated hole to achieve that, but it would probably be an arm and a leg to swap that...