Grinding Reels

One of the many jobs golf course maintenance departments perform over the winter is reconditioning and sharpening mowers. Reel mower cutting units require a lot of maintenance to get through a year, and over the winter we try to get them back to "factory specs" -- or as close as possible.  It is a time-consuming job, but very necessary to keep the machines cutting through the growing season.

At Sugar Creek, our grinders are very old and "low tech" but they get the job done. As near as I can tell, the maintenance department has spent a grand total of $800 on used grinding equipment over the last 40 years. We have a Neary 500 spin-grinder from the 1980's and a Neary bedknife grinder from the same period. In addition, we have a Peerless 1300 sharpener from probably the 1960's. We normally relief grind with the Peerless, then spin grind with the Neary 500.

Peerless 1300 Manual

Our John Deere manual contains this relief grinding diagram:

From John Deere 2500B Manual

A perfect "double relief grind" as in this diagram is difficult to achieve with our equipment, so we use the Toro specification of a 30 degree single relief grind. Either one performs just as well. In the European literature, they often use the term "blade thinning" interchangeably with "relief grinding," and I think that describes perfectly the main benefit of relief grinding. According to the research, specifically Toro's, the best quality of cut results from sharp edges with "light contact" between the bed knife and reel blade. Light contact is much easier to achieve with less surface area making contact. Relief grinding, or blade thinning, achieves this and also makes keeping the edges sharp through backlapping much more effective.

This year, we tried something new: a Bernhard Rapid Relief grinder. As you can see from the manual cover above, the Peerless sharpener takes up a lot of floor space. With space at a premium in the shop, I wanted to see if a smaller tool could replace the old Peerless grinder. It turns out, the short answer for us, a 9-hole golf course with a total of 17 reels to grind, is "yes;" the long answer is "yes -- but it is quite a bit slower and a little less precise than a full size relief grinder." I'm still not sure if I will get rid of the old Peerless, but this little tool has me thinking about it.

Here is the Rapid Relief:

Berhard Rapid Relief

The rail attaches to the bedknife with strong magnets. On some reels, the front roller has to be taken off. On these reels, we had to remove the groomer to make space for the wheel. This was an extra step but the groomer gear boxes needed inspection and cleaning any way. Once you have the setup parallel and adjusted correctly, you have to get the feel down.

It takes some practice to get consistent results. The first reels we did were fairway reels and they did not come out "perfect" but they were completely adequate. Once we got to the greens mower reels, though, the results were just about as good as we could achieve with the old Peerless grinder -- but quite a bit slower. It took dozens of passes with the abrasive wheel to take off the required material. These greens mower reels took about 45 minutes each. I did take off a lot of material because they had lost almost all of their relief from the previous year. This unit is not really intended to be a shop's only relief grinder. It is more meant to touch up or restore relief to blades during the season. For a small shop like ours, though, it can get the job done.

Bernhard Rapid Relief in action

After the restoring relief to the blade, the spin grinder is used to sharpen the reel and ensure that it is a perfect cylinder. It would be nice if this Neary spin grinder had a relief grinder attachment, but it is a spin-grind only model that we purchased used about 15 years ago. It is in good shape and works perfectly but it is a single purpose grinder at this point. I would love to find a used relief head that could be retrofitted to this unit.

Neary 500 spin grinder

Here is a close-up of the spin-grinding process:

See Time to Grind and Reel Grinding Complete for more on reel grinding.

Kubota Mower Repair

We had another complicated repair to make recently on the Kubota front mower used to mow slopes and uneven terrain with a flexible Lastec deck. It is an important machine as our other mowers with flat decks scalp the turf around the greens, tees, and bunkers. The machine was leaking fluid from a gasket on the hydrostatic transmission (HST). Normally, gasket changes are not that difficult, but on this machine the bolts needed to remove the transmission housing are located inside the tractor. The only way to access them is to separate the tractor completely and remove the transmission.

Here are some interesting pictures from the process:

Kubota F3060 after separating engine frame from front axle

Hydrostatic transmission rear view

After more cleaning and disassembly

Inside of the tractor after removing transmission - amazingly clean for a 16 year old machine.

Inside of hydrostatic transmission

HST cylinder block - This little thing is what makes the mower move!

Reassembled with new gasket, o-rings, and seals

 The mower is now back together and working. Older machines are always an adventure. When I was researching this repair, I did not find much on the internet related to it. Luckily, I did have the workshop manual for this piece of equipment which was a pretty good guide. I share these photos because, first, they are pretty neat to look at (if you like machines), and, second, they might help another grounds crew or mechanic needing to do a similar repair.

Fairway mower wheel repair

On Tuesday, the left wheel on the fairway mower looked crooked.  I was really hoping the lug bolts were just loose, but no such luck.  We have an interesting repair in front of us. The frame cracked on the wheel motor mount. 

Cracked frame

  

There is supposed to be a wheel there!

 A new front axle frame assembly is about $2500 plus many hours of labor.  We are going to try repairing the mount before going that direction.  After cutting out the paper thin rusted frame and grinding, I think we have something we can work with: 

Clamping up the new motor mount

   

New pieces of metal added to strengthen frame

Reinforced the top

Side view

Finished repair

The fairway mower is back in action and everything worked fine. I'm fairly confident the wheel motor mount is now stronger than it was new. Our fairway mower double cut the fairways today to catch up on the grass growth since last Thursday. We have had a lot of rain in the past week and the fairways were getting very long.  They are now back to normal height.

On a happier note, I had a visitor last week!

Greens Mower Engine Rebuild

One of the many things that golf course maintenance crews do over the winter is repair machinery.  At Sugar Creek, we have a few machines to overhaul this winter including the greens mower.  The greens mower is arguably the most important machine in the fleet.  You certainly don't have a golf course without something to mow and groom greens.

Since 2008, we have mowed the greens with a John Deere 2500B with 11-blade reels and turf conditioners(or "groomers").  This unit has been used for 3650 hours so far and we are going to need it to continue to function for at least the next 2 seasons, maybe more.  We rebuilt the reels two years ago, so they are in fine condition.  The engine, however, was starting to show its age.

Gary on the greens mower

This unit is powered by a liquid cooled, 2-cylinder, gasoline-powered Kawasaki FD620D.  This engine has performed admirably for thousands of hours but, late last year, it began to leak oil from the crankshaft seals.  A compression test revealed one cylinder had low compression and the other was marginal.  I also discovered from other superintendents and message boards on the internet that this engine tends to lose oil pressure somewhere between 3500 and 4000 hours due to a worn out oil pump spur gear.  This gear is plastic but is driven by the metal crankshaft.  Eventually, the metal wins.  See this thread on My Tractor Forum for an example of what happens.

To avoid dripping oil on the green and a mid-season surprise, this engine either needed to be rebuilt or replaced.  Replacing the engine and old exhaust was going to cost at least $3000.  Since we have rebuilt a few v-twin engines recently, I was pretty confident we could rebuild for a lot less.  A big thanks to Gary and Felix who did most of the work on this project.

Here is the greens mower after they pulled the engine:


John Deere 2500B

Here is the engine partially disassembled.  There was a lot of gunk behind the flywheel due to the leaking crankshaft seal:

Kawasaki FD620D

Luckily, the major components of the engine were in good enough shape.  We just needed a gasket set, new cylinder rings, and new valves.  The cylinder walls just needed honing.  Most of the important stuff -- cylinder size, crankshaft measurements, piston diameter, inside diameter of bearings, etc. -- were very close to factory specification and well within wear tolerances.

Cylinder and piston after the head was removed

Piston after cleaning and ring removal

Cylinder head with new seals and valves

Inside of engine

We decided to replace the valves instead of regrinding because the exhaust valves showed an uneven wear pattern indicating they were warped or the stem slightly bent.  An engine shop with the right equipment could probably have saved them, but they are cheaper to replace at this point:

Engine valves

The oil pump gear was indeed wearing out.  If you look closely at the following pictures, you can see some teeth are smaller than others.  The wear was all on one side of the teeth because that was the surface that provided resistance on the crankshaft gear.  All it takes is one tooth to break or the gears to mesh wrong and the oil pump stops pumping.  After that, it is not long before the engine seizes up.  And believe me . . . you don't want to be stuck in the middle of the 4th green at 6 a.m. wondering how you are going to get a mower with a seized engine off a putting green before the golfers catch up to you.  And without leaving ruts in the green 4 inches deep.

FD620D oil pump gear with worn teeth

You can see the worn surfaces on the right side

After everything was cleaned and inspected, reassembly was pretty easy.

Engine ready for reassembly

Ready to close it up!

The engine started up right away, after filling with oil and coolant of course.  We tested the compression after running for an hour and got good results - about 190psi both sides.  This engine should be good for many more hours now.  We just have to cross our fingers that the electrical and hydraulic components hang in there.

Back in action!

A Sampling of Winter Projects

During the winter, golf course equipment needs to be maintained and serviced for the year.  We have finished our long list of preventative maintenance tasks and have moved on to the projects that can add new life to old machines or extend the life of a newer machine.

Rusty mowing decks get scraped and repainted. This adds many years to the life of these decks.  If allowed to rust, the structural integrity of the deck is compromised.

 

This year we tried a product called "Rust Reformer" as a primer after wire brushing off the loose material. It claims to "convert" rust to a paintable surface. Not sure what what that means, but it sounds good. Time will be the judge.  As auto body workers have told me, inspired by Neil Young of course: rust never sleeps.

 

We also tiled the bathroom and put up waterproof panelling this winter:

 

Here is a bench waiting to go out on the 4th hole Red Tee.  It was donated by the Carey family who lived across the street from the golf course for many years:

 

Our 1996 sprayer now sports new plumbing and a "Cleanload" eductor on the side. This is the black container on the side. It will be used primarily for disolving granular fertilizer and mixing it into the tank.  Many people aren't aware of this, but we actually use our sprayer most often for fertilization.

 

These are just a few projects that the Superintendent and Equipment Tech completed over the past few months. We are ready to turn our attention more to the outdoors! Spring is coming soon.

Time to Grind

If you walk past a golf course maintenance facility this time of year, you will most likely hear the sound of grinding wheels, air rachets, and other assorted power tools. Winter maintenance of golf course equipment is essential to keeping them sharp and operational. At Sugar Creek, we use two Neary grinders to spin-grind reels and grind bedknives back into cutting shape. These grinders are considered "classics" but they do their job well if you are careful and treat them nicely.  Throughout the season, we touch-up and adjust these reels twice a week but winter is when we re-grind and re-set all the cutting angles and surfaces.

Here are some pictures of Greens King IV reels being worked on:

Our equipment technician uses very precise gauges and calipers to ensure that the reels are not slightly cone-shaped or the bedknives tilted. He often uses this Interapid indicator to test within a 10,000th of an inch if everything is coming out straight and parallel. Here you can see the indicator being used on the bedknife grinder:

Winter is when golf course equipment technicians shine. In addition to sharpening and grinding reels and blades, they change bearings, grease joints, change oil, rebuild engines, service hydraulics, replace brake pads, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I won't list here. After finishing grinding and preventative maintenance on the machines, we will be replacing the reels on the fairway mower and refurbishing the groomers on our greens mower early next year.

In the above photo, you can see the groomer blades on the greens mower cutting units.  The bearings and adjustment hardware are worn out making it very difficult to set them precisely and have them stay there.  Grooming is tricky as it is without having the cutting depth change on you.  Ideally we like the little vertical blades to go into the "canopy" of the turf just slightly and lift up leaf blades that are getting too long or running sideways (about .030" below height of cut on greens).  Having groomers too deep could damage the green and would eventually break groomers -- for deep cutting we have verti-cutter units.  Going too shallow will have no effect at all.  Since accurate adjustment is so important, the bearings and hardware on these groomers needs to be replaced once in a while to produce a quality results.

Somebody once told me Superintendents swear by groomers; mechanics swear at them.  This will most likely be true in our shop sometime in mid to late January when we take them apart and start fixing them up. 

Rain Days

People often wonder what golf course workers do when it is raining.  Well . . . it's been raining this April so I can answer that question!  Rainy days actually serve an important function for a golf course crew.  I always keep a couple "rain day" jobs on the back burner until there is a suitable day to get them done.  In fact, if it never rained, I think I would have to create "virtual rain days" where the crew stays off the course and focusses on other projects. 


A View from the Maintenance Building

Here's what we've been up to on the past few rain, or snow, days:

• 3-hour Spring Safety Training and Staff Meeting
• 1 worker fixed ball marks in the rain
• 1 worker changed course set up so that we can catch up on mowing when it drys out
• We disassembled most of the pumphouse in preparation for some repairs
• Refurbished 50 bunker rakes with Vinyl Guard
• Investigated the mystery of the bladder tank (see below)
• Cleaned shop
• At the moment, the crew is helping me do an alpha sort and file of receipts and PO's from 2010.  I meant to do it over the winter but, you know, didn't get around to it.
• Blog!

Bunker Rakes

Over time, fiberglass bunker rakes start to fade and splinter.  They last longer than the old aluminum handles that would kink and bend, but nobody likes fiberglass splinters.  Paint doesn't stick for long, so we decided to use a product called Vinyl Guard to refurbish the rakes.  Vinyl Guard uses a heat shrrinking process to put a permanent protective coat on the handle.  For a couple bucks per rake, they are like new.

Jimmy's favorite job

Some of our "new" bunker rakes

The Pump House

We are in the process of making some repairs to the irrigation pump system.  Over the past week, we have been disassembling and inspecting all the components of the system.  Most of the piping will be replaced due to its age and condition but some elements can be refurbished. 

Irrigation system components up for replacement

Definitely in the "replace" pile

Particularly interesting has been the "mystery of the bladder tank"!  We have never been able to figure out the manufacturer or model number of our tank because there are no markings.  We also weren't exactly sure if it was working properly or not (we suspected not). 

The red tank in the following pictures is supposed to hold an inflated air bladder that buffers system pressure and protects the pumps from excessive starts and stops.  It is important to maintaining the system's health and longevity.  Unfortunately, the air cavity was slowly leaking pressure and had been contaminated with water and sludge.  The tank weighed at least 800 pounds in its waterlogged state so our mechanic had to do some rigging to move it.  Using a combination of chainfalls, sleds, chains, and rollers, he moved the tank out of the pumphouse without breaking a sweat. 

The tank on a "sled" with rollers

Out the door and in the air

With the tank at the shop, it was time to investigate.  Many of these tanks are repairable if you can find the manufacturer and replace the "bladder" inside.  We carefully removed the flanges and drained the air compartment of water so we could take out the bladder.  Here is what it looks like:

Pressure tank bladder

After a lot of searching, we found the slit that was leaking.  Unfortunately these are not patchable.  They have to hold 120 psi while expanding and contracting constantly so they have to be in one piece.  We had to consult with a few experienced pump contractors to figure out the manufacturer.  After calling the manufacturer, we determined a replacement bladder is available.  Now we have the option to replace the bladder and rebuild this tank instead of buying a whole new tank.  Neither option is exactly "cheap" but the mystery has been solved!