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Collection, Preservation and Display of Old Lawn Mowers

Auto certes mk1. Any way to increase cut height

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Hello,

I have just acquired a lovely old Auto Certes mk1, totally original and in good running order.

Whilst I appreciate it for its solid enginerring and generally as a fine piece of vintage garden machinery, I think it cuts too close for my lawn. 

I have increased the cut height to the maximum but this is still very short. My question is, can it be modified in any way to increase the cut height or should I take it for what it is and just use it to roll the lawn after a cut with my Hayter?

Regards

Paul

Forums

wristpin Sun, 12/05/2019

If you have the skills and facilities you could extend the roller mounting brackets downwards to lower the roller and raise the front .

or

Has your machine still got the extended axles on the front or has a previous owner hacked them off? If it still has them you could get a couple of wheels and mount one either side to raise the front.  A bit of a bodge and may not do much for the finish but may achieve the objective.

 

hortimech Sun, 12/05/2019

The problem is that there is a correlation between the height of cut, cylinder diameter, number of blades in the cylinder and the thickness of the bottom blade.

The Auto-Certes is designed to cut close on Golf greens, bowling greens, tennis courts and cricket squares. If you do manage to raise the height of cut, the bottom blade isn't going to be at the correct angle, so it will not cut correctly.

The only modification I would suggest is to fit a Marquis bottom blade, but even this will only raise the cut slightly. A cylinder mower is designed to cut a lot closer than a rotary mower.