Episode 154: Jim Nedin Returns

Episode Transcript
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Trent Manning (00:57):
Welcome to the reel turf techs podcast for the
technician that wants to getreel follow along.
As we talk to industryprofessionals and address hot
topics that we all face alongthe way we'll learn tips and
tricks.
I'm your host, Trent.
Manning let's have some Welcometo The Reel Turf Techs Podcast,

(01:20):
episode 1 54.
Industry legend Jim Nedinreturns to share his deep
knowledge of the Toro Procore 648 and how to get the most out
of this air fire.
Jim walks us through set upmaintenance tips that makes a
real difference out on the turf.
We also touch on cutting units.
Exploring more of Jim's timetested insight into precision

(01:43):
and performance.
It's another can't miss episodepacked with practical knowledge
from one of the most respectedminds in the turf industry.
Let's get real with Jim Nedin.

(02:06):
Welcome, Jim to the Real TurfText podcast.
Thanks for being on again.

Jim Nedin (02:11):
Well, thank you very much.
Happy to be here with you again,Trent.

No, it's exciting and you are one of the most
knowledgeable people in theindustry.
I don't know how you are able toretain all the knowledge from
all the years,'cause you've beendoing this a long time.
But I'm very thankful that youagreed to come back on and last
time we talked about cuttingunits for almost two hours.

(02:38):
And I'm not gonna say that wewon't dive into that again, but
this time I was kind of thinkingwe would talk about 6 48 air
fires and sprayers.

Jim Nedin (02:50):
Okay.
No, that sounds good.
Yeah, we're probably abouthalfway through on the on the
reels.

okay.
Yeah.

Jim Nedin (02:59):
but just getting well, I mean, I did review our
podcast together.
You did a really great job ofinterviewing me.
I appreciate that.

Oh, well,

Jim Nedin (03:08):
you know, there, there were a little, a few more,
little tidbits, but nonethelessyou know, I'm ready to move on
as well as if you are, we

Well, and well, while we're on that, if there's
a couple things that Yeah.
You want to talk about, let's doit.
I don't,

Jim Nedin (03:24):
not necessarily.
I just think as far as, youknow, looking at the elements or
the reality that turf is aliving organism and the, if we
can treat it well, it doesn'tlike to be cut.
It wants to grow to seed.
And we do cause stress everytime we mow.
So if in fact we can, especiallywith reels and finer turfs, just

(03:51):
as bent grass and oh, any of thefine turf species, that if we
can cut it to its liking, whichis.
It doesn't like it anyway.
But if we can cut it to wherethat, the point of that hydrogen
peroxide that I spoke about, Ibelieve I spoke about hydrogen
peroxide can really do its joband seal and heal that plant so

(04:12):
that it can live another day, soto speak.
And the reduction of chemicalsthen is pretty dramatic from the
University of Nebraska.
Did a study on that a number ofyears ago.
And for airborne pathogendisease that gets into the plant
their study had shown that youcan reduce chemical application

(04:33):
up to 60%

Wow.

Jim Nedin (04:35):
by simply cutting to the, cutting the grass to its
likeness.
Meaning what it would prefer wasa, is a very sharp, clean cut so
that it can seal and heal asquickly as possible.
So, a lot more you know, thatI've researched over the years.
A lot more studies that I'vebeen involved with and have

(04:57):
certainly read about andprofessors that are just
phenomenal over the years thatare here with us today.
And some have passed, but youknow, so, so real technology has
been something that I've beeninvolved with for, I don't know,
decades.
and, it's always just been apassion for me as aerators and
sprayers for sure.

(05:18):
I think I mentioned to you thelast time in the last episode
that I started out with sprayersas far as doing work for the
G-C-S-A-A back in the, earlyeighties.
And worked with Alan Hayes, whowas an employee of the G-C-S-A-A
at that time.
And we created the first Iguess, guide for.

(05:40):
Re-certifying spray technicians

Ah, okay.

Jim Nedin (05:44):
yeah.
So, and he brought me into thefold, so to speak.
So, That's how I got involved inthat.
And I'm I'm just referencingthat, but I did speak to that, I
think pretty in depth during ourlast podcast, so

Were you working for the Toro company at that

Jim Nedin (05:59):
no.
I was working for, eh, Griffithin, in the Pittsburgh area at
that time.
And you know, there was asuperintendent at Rolling Rock
Club in Ligonier, pa, and hisname was John Kobi.
And John passed away from cancera number of years ago.

(06:20):
But I, John was on the board atthe G-C-S-A-A and I didn't know
that, but I was in WesternPennsylvania doing a lot of
training, sprayer training, andsprayers were kind of crude back
then.
We didn't have, all thesophistication we have today was
sprayers, but they, the endresult is they still do the same
thing that they did back then ifthey were calibrated correctly.

(06:43):
So, you know, I started out witha few people.
As far as visiting a few people,and it kind of grew from there.
And then it started to turn intoseminars.
And back then I didn't havePowerPoint or anything like
that.
I had a big old chalkboard we'ddraw things and, you know, more
hands-on than anything.
But it kind of grew to gettinginvolved then with the

(07:05):
department of Agriculture in thewestern Pennsylvania area.
And then it went into WestVirginia and I was doing some
training in West Virginia fortheir association, their annual
and semi-annual meetings.
You know, making sure that thespray technicians knew the
guidelines and chemical a, thechemicals and different things
like that.
So, it just kind of grew fromword of mouth.

(07:28):
And then one day John Yakobcalls me and says, Hey you may
be getting a call from someoneat the G-C-S-A-A.
Because I, at their LA our lastmeeting, I mentioned your name
and that you would be reallygood to have on board with the
GCSA as far as helping withsprayer, certification or

(07:50):
sprayer, you know, training.
that's when Alan Hayes then toget, did get in touch with me
and he had started a guide ondifferent calibrations for
backpack, sprayers for rotaryspreaders for, you know, you
name it, anything that appliedpesticides and so we worked and

(08:12):
finished that.
And then I pretty much had theeastern part of the US and he
had the western part of the US.
From Florida all the way up to,you know, Maine.

Oh wow.

Jim Nedin (08:23):
so it was pretty great.
It was pretty great.
But I, you know, that, eh,Griffith was so good to me.
I was there for 22 years.
They allowed me the extra time.
They knew it was good for theindustry, but they allowed me
the extra time.
I took all of my vacation time.
I was just really gettingpassionate about it, and that's
how I became, you know,affiliated or associated with

(08:44):
the G-C-S-A-A way, way backwhen,

Okay.

Jim Nedin (08:48):
in I guess, 1982, somewhere in there.

Oh, wow.
All right.
Yeah.
That is crazy.
No, that's a good story too.
And yeah.
What do you think about?
I've been thinking about this alot because I would really like
to do some research on cuttingunits and behind center distance
and some of those things, youknow, on, on greens.

(09:12):
And you know what, I don't knowhow you would do that though.
'cause we gotta get a universityor somebody involved probably.

Jim Nedin (09:22):
R Right.
So I used to do a lot of workwith Penn State University at
Valentine Research Center backin the day.
And they had a lot of fun withwith chemicals, that we would
use to see that efficacy, howthe plant would take up the
chemicals and so on.
And we used black light anddifferent things like that to do

(09:45):
photographing these kind ofthings and video slow high speed
video.
And so just looking at thosekind of things.
But we also did a lot with withcutting mowing grass Dr.
Dewi to his past.
When I was younger I was,introduced to him and I did some
sessions for his students.
And I would back when the turfclub whenever I lived in the, in

(10:11):
closer to that area, I guess youcould say.
I would go up a couple times ayear and present as a turf club
and they would have theiroutings as well as far as their
field days.
And you know, I'd be a part ofthat and looking at the quality
of cut and so on and so forth.
But as you mentioned aboutbehind center distance and, you
know, different looking atdifferent adjustments and so on

(10:33):
and so forth, that is critical.
and it does have some.
Relationship to the types ofgrass, right?
If we were to look at warmseason grasses, for instance, we
wouldn't be so aggressive withwarm season grasses.
And if you've ever seen any ofthe presentations by Toro or by
me independently or through Torowe discovered early on whenever

(10:56):
we were working with Disney andI don't know if Toro still is
working with Disney but I spenta lot of time down at Disney.
'cause at that time they hadfive golf courses and they had
the y world of sports and the yworld of sports.
Al Bermuda four 19 on theirfields.
And they just had common Bermudain, in the rough areas, which

(11:19):
was just nasty

Yeah.
Yeah.

Jim Nedin (11:21):
it's not very refined, but nonetheless and I
think I mentioned to you, I wascalled a DM Yankee for a few
years because I'm a northernNebraska guy, and I go down
there and I see all this weed,right?
It looks like just littleChristmas trees growing in the
grass.
But so as I say, that's what Iwas referred to for a few years
until I really got my, thehandle on warm season But with

(11:45):
warm season grasses, wediscovered with a whole toro
research team down at the Yworld of sports that, that you
cannot.
You know, adjust a mower in warmseason grasses to the likeness
of cool season grasses.
It'll be disastrous for the mostpart because it doesn't tolerate
a whole lot of lift.

(12:05):
it's pretty much zero to aboutfour degrees behind the center
line.
Where warm season grasses, youcan go, you can get pretty
dramatic with it, but usuallythere's usually somewhere around
six degrees.
So anywhere from zero to sixdegrees, depending on what
you're trying to accomplish.
You can go up to eight probablyas the absolute mat maximum,

(12:27):
before it really starts to dosome nasty things into the turf.
And what I mean by that is thecutting unit, the reel itself
goes so deep into the profilebecause the bed knife is eight
degrees behind the bottom of thereel.
So if you wanna, just a quickway to, to look at this in math,
in a five inch diameter reel,for instance.

(12:48):
A quarter inch equals sixdegrees.
So if you were a dead zero withthe bed knife, that it was
exactly at the bottom of thereel, and if you moved it back a
quarter of an inch, that wouldbe six degrees.
So, and then you can multiply ordivide or however you want.
You know, three degrees would bean eighth of an inch, that kind

(13:09):
of

Yeah.
Yeah.

Jim Nedin (13:10):
so if we look at six degrees, you know, where we're
back slightly further, right?
So we're, you know, back roughlythree eighths of an inch.
And so what happens is the realitself before it gets to the cut
point is so penetrating sodeeply into the uncut grass and
it's lifting at a fairlysignificant angle.

(13:31):
So there's two things thathappen.
One, the real dipping into thatuncut grass starts to damage the
profile.
Right.
It's abrasive to the profile,but as it's cutting the grass,
it's lifting on each of thosegrass blades.
As it's cutting it's pullingthose grass blades up.
The opposite side of that isthat it pulls the cutting unit

(13:52):
down, and that's where we getscalping and gouging and so on
and so forth.
Unru this, right?
So we try to get some lift tocut cleanly because we want, do,
want to lift up on that plant orlift up on that tissue a little
bit, but we don't want to cut iton such a bias that it really

(14:12):
opens that wound up that it'snot a, a square cut, so to
speak.
So if we cut on a bias, now wehave this huge wounded area, and
again, even if the real sharpand you have this huge wounded
area that again, then thechemical can't work in the plant
to heal and seal that plant,right?
The hydrogen

Yeah.
yeah.
No,

Jim Nedin (14:33):
So we want to try to keep things as straight and as,
as square as possible wheneverwe're cutting.
And so the steeper the angle,the more difficult it becomes
for after cutt appearance andalso for the health of the
plant.
And also the gouging and so onand so forth.
It causes a cutting unit tobecome very unruly in the turf

(14:56):
profile.
And that has nothing to sayabout how much thatch or what
that cutting unit's setting on.
Right?

Yeah.

Jim Nedin (15:05):
You take a seven inch diameter, it typically weighs
around 140 to 150 pounds, andit's sitting on, you know, three
to maybe three and a half inchrollers.
There's not a whole lot of thatroller that's really supporting
that turf profile because it, ifyou look at a, anything that's
circular like a roller.
maximum point of penetration orweight is right on a laser line

(15:30):
at the bottom of that roller.
Every, all the other weight isis becoming less and less as
that roller turns its way out ofthe turf, right?
So the, so it is the profile ofthat roller in itself, the
cutting is sitting much deeperthan it was whenever you
measured it on your workbenchwith your height

Right.
Yeah.
Yeah,

Jim Nedin (15:51):
and so that's just the reality of it.
I prefer in warm season grass isa seven inch diameter reel.
That's, I'm just biased to that.
There are a couple reasons.
One, because warm seeds andgrass tends to, really thatch
tends to propagate you know,pretty quickly.

(16:11):
So with the heavier mowers, likeold gang mowers we used to use
that weighed 250 pounds, theyreally hold on thatch layer.
They really force that cuttingunit to work into some word
stable in the turf profile.
So with the lighter weightcutting units, yes, they're, how
can I say they're less expensiveon your budget whenever you

(16:32):
purchase them and so forth.
But now you've got more to dealwith that thatch layer allowed
to grow rather than to hold thatthatch layer down.
So the seven inch diameter realweighs more, but it also has a
benefit of being seven inches indiameter, higher torque, but it
reaches out further, so itreaches out further into the

(16:55):
uncut grass.
To start to play and harvestthat grass.
And what I mean by harvest is aprocess.
It's from the point where thereal blade actually touches that
uncut grass to the point whereit's actually cut.
That's what I refer to asharvesting.
So it's playing in the turf,standing that turf up is the

(17:16):
best that it can, and then it'sfinally cutting it.
So with a five inch diameterrail, you're kind of compromised
because a radius is, sharper,right?
It's less of a radius, so itreaches out less.
So, having said that, wheneveryou're working in really dense
profile, you want as much ofthat.

(17:37):
You want that real to work ashard as it can in front of the
cut, to, help stand up thatgrass and pull it into play, and
then finally cut it.
So there's a lot that goes onthere.
And plus again, the extra weightof that cutting unit, but going
to where the, the cutting edgeis.

(17:58):
And I refer to the cutting edgerather than refer to, you know,
where, what the angle of thebottom of the bed knife is in
many cases that, that those twodon't add up.
Now in, in Toro's case with theDPA cutting units designed by
Jerry Goman as you had

Yeah.
Yeah.
Yep.

Jim Nedin (18:17):
I think last September

Uhhuh.

Jim Nedin (18:18):
did.
And

Good

Jim Nedin (18:20):
he mentioned, what's that?

That's a good memory.
Yeah.
He was on last September.

Jim Nedin (18:25):
he's one of my favorite people.
And, but Jerry was one heck of aresearch engineer.
And he as he mentioned to you, Ithink it was between a brand new
reel and wanted his down to itslimit, which is a five inch
drill down to four and a halfthat.
A cutting edge basically willmaybe move back five, maybe 10

(18:50):
thousands.
because the way it was designedthat, that bed bar, if you will,
if you can imagine as the realwears, that bed bar or bed knife
itself actually moves a littlebit forward because of the
extended upper adjustments towhere the fork is up where the

(19:10):
double d nut goes through the

Yeah.

Jim Nedin (19:13):
black bolt, tighten it up with the spring and the
nut having said that.
So whenever the real wears, thebed knife moves slightly
forward.
However, you need to lower itdown again.
To get back to the height thatyou once are.
So as you do that now, you chasethat bed knife cutting edge back
to exactly where it was.

(19:35):
So you're constantly chasing itback and forth until pretty much
down the limit.
Then after that, I mean,everything has its limit, right?
So to speak, as far as thingsreally go crazy then.
But from start to finish or froma new reel to a limit on a DP, a
cutting unit that, that bedknife cutting edge if you're

(19:57):
adjusting to the maintaining theheight of cut throughout the
life of that reel, that cuttingedge of that where the reel
meets the bed night basicallydoesn't move back any more than
five.
I think it's five in the in theengineering It's five.
I would say maybe 10 at verymost, which is nothing.
And here's why.
Here's why.

(20:17):
It's nothing.
People get all bent outta shapeabout looking at a bed knife and
saying, okay, is it absolutelytrue to the pivot point of that
bed bar?
Right?
And you know, SIP does a reallygood job of focusing in on that.
And whenever I was younger, Iused SIP products, good
products.
However, if you look at that andback in the day, I always say

(20:40):
that because I'm an old guy.
But back in the day, you know,it was pretty much center
punching and drilling and, youknow, there were some things
that we used automated wise,but.
To have the bed knife holes in abed bar, always in the exact
spot where they needed to be.
And then forging the bed knivesand having those holes in the

(21:03):
exact spot that where theyneeded to be.
Now you're chasing all that outto a cutting edge, right?
And now you grind an edge on abed knife.
So you have this multiplyingeffect of error

Right, right.

Jim Nedin (21:15):
that in today's world, basically we look at a
bed knife whenever it'sinstalled on a cutting unit or
on a bed bar.
And the bed knife cutting edge,or the cutting edge of the bed
knife is is centered to thecenter hole of the bed knife

(21:36):
itself.
And then the bed bar holes are,should be designed true to the
axis point.
Whether they're forward or back,but they're true to the access
point.
So whenever you mount that alltogether, basically should be
within 10 thousandths.
So you could be out up to 10thousandths.

(21:58):
Alright?
So,

Yeah.

Jim Nedin (21:59):
alright, one degree is 43 thousandths

Yes.

Jim Nedin (22:06):
In a five inch diameter oil, one degree is
43,000.
So if you're at five or 10thousandths, whenever you
install your bed bar, bed knifeassembly on your Foley grinder,
whenever it's brand new andyou're cleaning it up, I don't
know I don't know how in thereal reality, you're never going

(22:33):
to see that.
Never in a million years.

Yeah, I,

Jim Nedin (22:38):
there are some that, that don't meet that spec.
I've been contacted by somereally good equipment managers
that say, Hey, I, I have this onmy milling machine.
I'm looking at this, blah, blah,blah.
It's 20,000 solid or what?
Send it back to the distributor.
or the bar's out.
Get a new bar.
That's an error.
That's a flaw.

(22:59):
That's a flaw That is notstandard.

Right, right, right.
And I mean, I've talked about

Jim Nedin (23:05):
and that has to do with, that has to do with John
Deere, that has to do with Toro,that has to do with Jake, I'm
hoping.
Right.
I mean,

yeah.
I mean, I think

Jim Nedin (23:15):
all the manufacturers kind of follow suit with the way
they design things today thatyou know, we're really splitting
hairs at five thousands or 10thousands.
You know, of an inch, one way orthe other.
But whenever we get, you know, Iwould say 15 or 20 wait a
minute.
That, that, that's not meeting aspecification that we're looking

(23:39):
for,

yeah.
No, I agree.
And so I ground a QA five bedbar the other day on my Foley
bed knife grinder.
And the reason I ground the bedbar is it had, hump basically in
the middle of it.
That was 30 thousandths, andthat was caused by, it struck a

(24:03):
sprinkler head.
And after that happened, it bentthat much.
And I've had quite a few ofthese bed bars bend over the
years, over the last, whatever,10 years.
And I was just replacing thembecause they were 150 bucks, but
now they're over 400, you know,and it's just, it's getting too

(24:27):
pricey to replace.
So,

Jim Nedin (24:30):
I don't know where that's gonna end.
If it, I'd probably not.

I don't think, I don't see

Jim Nedin (24:36):
the new norm, right?
The new norm,

Yeah, it

Jim Nedin (24:39):
yeah.
So, so having said that, youknow, I feel pretty confident
with the fully bed knifegrinder, using the flags, that
kind of thing.
and, you know, even express atall using the flags.
Only it's a little more diceywith that as far as moving the
pivots where, you know, whereyou tie into the bed bar pivots,

(25:03):
that kind of thing.
So it's all kind of moving.
It's a moving target.
But having said that what Idon't struggle with, but my
comment is if you're regrindinga bed knife on any bed knife
grinder that uses flags, you'regoing by the front edge of that

(25:24):
bed knife that maybe worn at adifferent angle.
So I cannot with a high level ofconfidence say that's gonna come
out Correct.
You know what I'm Yeah.
Unless you use, unless you foundthe center line of the ben I
screw line of the pivots, likeS-P-S-S-I-P does.

Yeah,

Jim Nedin (25:46):
then you might find it, that front edge of that bed
knife is the, I don't know,50,000 to nothing.
I'd throw the knife away, ofcourse, then at that point.
But nonetheless you know, butwhen we're talking all new and
the spec is correct I'd say it'sa non-starter.
It's not worth having thatdiscussion.

Yeah, and I mean, I agree with that.
And so I did a video last yearand I pur purposely ground.
The front face of the bed knifeat a 16th taper from one end to
another.
So one end was 60 thousandths,you know, shorter than the other

(26:29):
end.
And we put it, it was a new reelactually it was a brand new
flex, 2120 or what, whatever thenew flex mower number is.
And we put this bed bar and bedknife in there and we went and
mowed side by side, another newmower, and we could not see the
difference.
And I mean, we were lookingreally hard and we knew where

(26:51):
the bad mower was, where thegood mower was, and you can't
tell a difference.
And that's a 16th of an inch.
And I think it would be hard toaccidentally grind one a 16th of
an inch.
You know, if you just, likeyou're

Jim Nedin (27:08):
right.
You'd have to,

or whatever.

Jim Nedin (27:10):
you'd have to be on something,

Yes.
Right, right.
Yeah.
I think it'd be pretty tough,

Jim Nedin (27:15):
You shouldn't be messing with a grinding machine
anyways if you're on something.

but yeah.
There you go.

Jim Nedin (27:21):
so, you know, there's there's a lot of give and take,
but I always like to, you know,I always say if you're building
a home, you start with thefooter being as square as you
can possibly get it.
Foundation walls, framing allthat because you don't wanna get
up to putting the roof on andthe shingles and having the
first row of shingles with ahalf a shingle at the bottom,
and you get up to the top andit's You know, only two inches

(27:43):
of shingle.
'cause now you can really seeit.
So I always try to, you know, wecall that stacking error.
You know, when you're building alot of components and each one
has a tolerance of, let's saytwo to three thousands, but
you're stacking five or six ofthem together, and now all of a
sudden it's like the leaningtower pizza and that wasn't
what, you know, you wanted as aresult.

(28:04):
So, you know, there's so manythings that there's, That can
influence.
So if you add all those littleminor errors up or in
discrepancies up, then you'vegot a bad product or a bad after
cut appearance, and that's whereyou have to kind of unwind
those, right?
One thing at a time.
And that's why I say don't throwfour or five things that you

(28:28):
think are going to fix it like

Oh

Jim Nedin (28:30):
at one time, because it might be worse, it might be
better, but the next time youhave that situation you don't
know which one reallydramatically made it better, and
all the other ones were justalong for the ride, or if it got
a lot worse, what caused it tobe become worse, you know?
So the USGA, came out with acouple years ago and said, if

(28:55):
you make a change to like acutting unit or a procedure
process and mainly it wasspeaking to, to cutting turf
that if you make a change thatyou should mow up to five times
before really determiningwhether it made it better or did

(29:15):
nothing or made it worse.
It's funny that they came out ofthat because for probably the
last 40 years, I've been sayingthree times, so I'll still stick
with my three times but theysaid five, you know, three to, I
always say three to five times.
Try it three Times.
Now if it, if you really startscalping and things got

Well, right?

Jim Nedin (29:33):
To stop, you know, don't continue.

Yeah.
yeah.
Yeah.

Jim Nedin (29:36):
You know?
But yeah, so I mean, there,there's tons of more things of
cutting units and, you know, Iknow that you wanted to get onto
some other subjects and I'mhappy to do that whenever you
would like to do

Yeah, I don't know.
I love talking about cuttingunits so much too, so Yeah

Jim Nedin (29:54):
your audience might be burned out from me talking

no, I don't think so.
I know like Jerry's episode, oneof the best episodes, your
episode was one of the mostpopular ones.
People really love getting,

Jim Nedin (30:08):
to hear.
I,

they really love getting into the weeds on this

Jim Nedin (30:11):
yeah.
Yep.

and I do too.
But we will go on to 6 48.
What's some of the things you'veseen over the years?
The biggest problems?
because yeah, and when I sayproblem 6 48 is hands down the
best air fire ever made, and Idon't think anybody would, you
know, argue that.

(30:35):
But it has had some issues hereand there.

Jim Nedin (30:40):
No question.

yeah.
So, yeah

Jim Nedin (30:42):
it's a piece of equipment that's, again,
designed to try to be everythingto everyone, right?

yeah.
Yeah.
Right.

Jim Nedin (30:50):
And whenever you get into those situations where a
very how can I say?
A a gener a machine that is, wasdesigned to air verify wide
spaces, closest, closer spaces,different depths, all these
things.
And to be able to do itflawlessly is pretty difficult,
no question.

Yeah.
Yeah.

Jim Nedin (31:11):
because the.
The angle of the head, likepeople would always, when we
first came out with that unitback in 2004, and that was a
project from probably about2000.
So it was around four years inthe making.
It really started to get moreaggressive with it the last two
years, like, 2002 to 2004started to get out there,

(31:34):
prototyping, that kind of thing.
But in 2004 it was released andso it was definitely, you know,
a game changer because numberone, it was twice as wide as the
conventional 24 inch aerator,

okay.

Jim Nedin (31:50):
right?
Like the GA 24, the Ryan ga 2424 inches, and the wheels were
inside of the path.
than the wheels being outside ofthe path, because in your second
pass, your wheels ran over whatyou just verified, compressed
the holes and made a bunch ofdooo on

Yeah.
Yeah.

Jim Nedin (32:11):
So, being twice as wide and the wheels inside of
that path and the versatility ofthe unit, being able to go from
shallow to deep and from one anda half inch spacing to three
inch spacing, then to have atransport speed as well was

(32:32):
pretty phenomenal.
So, you know, there from thatpoint there was very little
change made until we got into2006, 2007.
And what we started to see, orwhat we had at different times
was the turf guards did not haveenough pressure on the turf

(32:57):
guards at in certain situations.
The units built like a sixcylinder engine, so the outer
stompers go up and downtogether.
The mid stompers go up and downtogether, and the center two
stompers go up and downtogether.
Three and four go up and downtogether.
So if you had a four time headon there, three quarter inch

(33:19):
mount, that's eight times goinginto the ground and coming out
at the same time.
Now a time when it goes into theground and then proceeds to come
out of the ground, there's atremendous amount of suction
that's created.
And because we chose this sixcylinder.
Configuration we had the turfcrowning in the center of that

(33:44):
four foot, aeration, swat, andcrowning is not good because it
shears the roots, right?
It lifts.
So if you would walk across thatfirst time ever using that air
fire at a deep depth and you hadcrowding, it felt like, wow,
this is like, I'm walking on mymattress in the middle of this.

(34:04):
Well, that's not a good thing.
So I mean, we came out with a 10time head, many time head, which
meant that there were 20 timesgoing into the ground and coming
out of the ground at the sametime.
And we had three eights, sideeject times that you can install
in that.
So that's a massive amount ofsuction.
So, in 2006, we came up with adifferent hinge.

(34:29):
And a different on the standstanding and looking over the
machine from front to back.
On the left hand tuber framethat goes to the head.
We mounted a solid three quarterinch bar.
Maybe it was one inch bar, Ican't remember, with some slots
in it or grooves in it.
And that was to attach ex anextra set of springs.

(34:52):
And so the new hinge had theability to attach these springs
to the hinge for the center andfor the wings, or the left and
right.
To make them twice as strong.
Okay.
So that was great.
But the problem became then thatwe made the down pressure

(35:14):
stronger.
However, we're using plastic or.
Some form of plastic.
I can't remember exactly what itwas, or is, but, so the plastic
yielded, the plastic would bendinstead of posing the force down
to the turf, so that, that'sgood and not good, right?

(35:35):
And it's a good idea, but itdidn't go as far as we could.
So what we came up with then iswhat we called stiffeners.
And the stiffeners are littleactually they're metal.
It's a it has a metal back to itand it has fingers that stick
out.
And each of the fingers lay ontop of the plastic turf guard

(35:55):
and you shove those right in.
And so that it holds down on theplastic turf guard and stiffens
the plastic turf guard to makethose springs do what they were
intended to do, to hold down theturf.
So a lot of times what I'll findis the people that have a 2006
or newer machine, they run intothat problem and they'll take it

(36:16):
upon themselves to buy two extrasprings and I'll get a phone
call and they'll say, I putthese two extra springs on.
Did virtually nothing.
I said, well, did you get thestiffeners?
They don't know what I'm talkingabout.

Yeah, this is the first I've heard of it and

Jim Nedin (36:31):
stiffeners.
If you look in your whateverProcore book that you have it
probably under attachments orwhatever, you'll see the Turf
Guard Stiffeners and you have tobuy the correct turf guard
stiffener set for the correctturf guard, whether it's a three
hole, four hole, you know, fivehole, whatever it is to match

(36:53):
those up.
So if you're going with doublesprings, then you want the Turf
guard stiffeners to add to thatadditional set of springs that
you're going to apply so that itdoes hold on to turf.
So at first we said, you know,well, don't go as deep because
you're taking more material out.
You know, take every other timeout.
I mean, we did we were bandputting a bandaid on, on, you

(37:17):
know, we had a great air firethat you know, was pulling a lot
of cores, but we didn't, wedidn't have the, a good answer
for why it was doing it.
So we'll take every other tie,knot, don't go as deep, that
kind of thing.
Well, the superintendent said,well, that's why I bought this
machine to go deep, you know,and, well, you have to let the
root system grow over time,blah, blah, blah.

(37:39):
Well, how's the root systemgonna grow if I never go deep?
You know, that So we're kind ofcaught in this, you know,
circular firing squad.
But so that that's the way youwant to complete that thought is
get the turf guard, stiffenersand that's what they're called.
And there's a number, partnumber for each one.
So for you would need four ofeach, whatever

yeah.
For whichever

Jim Nedin (38:01):
And that will complete that thought.
But prior to 2006, then we cameout with a kit.
And the kit was, you couldchange that hinge out.
And there was a bracket that wedesigned to, to add those extra
springs to the frame and soforth.
But the kit was over a thousanddollars.
So it, it was like, oh.

(38:23):
So people were like, eh, I don'tthink I'm gonna do that.
So, but you know, I don't seetoo many 2004, 2005 units.
Every once in a while I'll seeyou'cause they kind of live
forever.
But you know, it's been a verygood unit.
What we've gotten into a lot isover the years is what we call
turf tufting.

Yep.

Jim Nedin (38:44):
And so it, oddly enough, whenever there, there
was a golf course south of whereI live right now, and they have
seven of these machines

Oh

Jim Nedin (38:56):
They get machines.
They get machines everywhatever, three or four years on
a lease or whatever.
And it would be, it would neverfail when they'd get these new
machines.
I would get a phone call andsay, these things are tough and
like crazy, all right?
I go down and so they'd be on apractice area showing me, and

(39:19):
I'd reach beside the machine.
They'd have it in a, and I'dreach beside the machine and I
yank it into D while it'soperating.
All of a sudden, bingo problemwent away oh my God, what'd you
do?
I said, well, first of all.
You can't use a long time to goshort into the turf.

(39:43):
If you're going to go a small, alow minimal depth into the turf,
you need to use a short time.
If you're going to go deep, youuse a long time,

Okay.

Jim Nedin (39:53):
you can't buy a long time and hope you'll get three
years life out of it as itwears, you'll just go down
another letter.
That's not the way it's gonnawork for you.
And just like I said, well,here's the deal.
The old Ryan Aerator and the oldGreens Toro Greens aerator, when

(40:13):
they dropped straight down.
dropped, you know, there wasvery little axle motion there as
far as from the axis with a 648.
If you look across the centerline of the 6 48 head.
The 6 48 head rotates off ofthat center link.
So when the head comes up, it'sactually on an angle

Nope.
Yep.

Jim Nedin (40:35):
when it drops, it rotates.
So if you're using a long timeand you're in a, and you only
want to go down at an inch, thataerators aerating on an angle.
So when the time comes out ofthe ground, it's kicking and it
tufts, it'll actually cause somepretty bad after verification
marks.
So by me taking and justgrabbing that lever and pulling

(40:59):
it down into D or E or F forwhatever, now I've lowered the
head to a straighter anglevertical, and now it's aerating
as you would expect it to.
And so, so that's those thingsthat I run into some still
today, I'll get phone calls, youknow.
And I'll say, well, what are youtrying to achieve?
Well, we only go, only want tokind of break the surface, you

(41:21):
know, only want to go down aninch or so.
Well, what kind of times are youusing?
Well, we're using these five anda half inch long times.
You can if you want, but you'regonna have a rotor tilling
effect, you know, so, those aresome of the things that we got
into.
Now you, you can make someadjustments to the upper links.
I don't know if you notice onthe, on a 6 48 there are what we

(41:43):
call upper links.
It looks like term, you know,tie rods and there's we're 17
and three quarters of an inchcenter to center.
So if you would imagine agreaser in a ball joint at the
end of its high rod, if youmeasured across the center of
that ball joint, it's about 17and three quarters of an inch.
And that's from the factory.
You can extend those out alittle bit, which then takes the

(42:07):
head.
It's tapered like this.
So now you're, because it'srolling in the center line.
You're gonna push it out alittle bit to kind of straighten
it.
So whenever you're noting asdeep, the head will straighten,
right?
So you can kind of cheat, but ifnow you go too deep, now the
head's gonna be like this,right?
And so now it's gonna start tokick or tough towards the

(42:29):
operator.
So I always ask customers at thedepth that you're aerating, how
is it tufting?
Is it tufting away from theoperator?
Is it tufting towards theoperator?
So that's a good indication thatthe head is either like, you
know, too close to the operatoron an angle, so it's tufting to
the operator, or not enough ofan angle as it's, you know,

(42:53):
going down, or it's gone downinto the turf.
So you can adjust those upperlinks, but there is a limit to
those upper links.
And so the limit is two and ahalf terms.
It's a lefthand thread and righthanded thread.
So if you'd envision, you'reactually going five, five terms
if you were going by one, right?

(43:14):
So it's coming out and going inpretty quickly.
But since we're on that centerlink, if we're extending the
upper links by two and a halfterms, we're really pushing out
on this, right?
So we're pushing out on this tostraighten that.
The head, there's two thingsthat happen.
If I push out too far on that, Imake the belt extremely tight on

(43:40):
the secondary belt that goes upto the head can have, you know,
prematurely have bearings, wearthose kind of things.
But that's not the main thingthat happens.
If I go more than two and ahalf, turns out on standing
again, operator position.
Looking back over the machine onthe right hand side is the on

(44:03):
the turf guard hinge point isthe the depth rod that goes up
to where A through H is, right?
Well, if you look at thatbracket, it's pretty close to
that tire.
If you go more than two and ahalf turns, that brings the head
in to where that brace that's onit rubs the tire.

Ah, okay.

Jim Nedin (44:28):
How do I know

yep.
Yep.

Jim Nedin (44:30):
in testing, we're like, oh, this is great.
Go another half a turn.
Boom, in the middle of the green

Oh, wow.

Jim Nedin (44:37):
so two and a half.
Turns out now two and a halfturns in.
Is what we call the otherextreme.
I want to go two and a halfturns in.
What will happen is if you gofurther than that, even though
there's a secondary adjustmenton the belt to make that belt
tighter, the belt will become abit too loose and it will start

(44:58):
to skip a beat under heavy loadconditions in harder turf.
So now it throws it out of timeand it'll rototill, it'll verify
if Rototill verify.
So you want to pay closeattention to that.
Now, what you will find on thoseupper links is that when
everything's brand new,everything is wonderful, right?

(45:19):
Things work as advertised.
So, but what you want to payattention to is on those upper
links, that ball joint, it's atthe end is is pressed on there
in a plastic, there's like aplastic liner.
If you take your big crescentwrench or whatever and crack the
nut loose if you're, if forwhatever reason that starts to

(45:45):
turn that ball joint, it'll popthat ball joint off the ball,
you're done not getting it backon.

yeah.
Yeah.

Jim Nedin (45:52):
So that ball joint itself is three quarters of an
inch thick.
So if you take a three quarterinch wrench or even a crescent
wrench to hold that ball jointwhile you're cracking that nut
loose, that's both the righthand thread and left hand
thread.
Now, what you might get into isyou can't turn the rod now
because silicon and dust, andeven though they're threads,

(46:15):
they still get in there, is thatI always take a hammer.
And kind of buck up against thetube in a lighter hammer and tap
on the threaded area to kind ofshake that loose.
And typically you can get it toturn then, so you'll need,
you'll either turn it with a youknow, a vice grips or something
to that effect to, to turn that.

(46:35):
But you can only go about oneturn at a time.
So I mark the tube and justdon't let anybody kind of be
talking to you sideways whileyou're doing this.
But you can't go too all two anda half turns on one side.
'cause now you're twisting thehead and it won't let you do
that.
The rod, those tie rods will getextremely tight, whether it's
left side or right side.

(46:56):
But whatever you do, make surethat you hold the ball joint
from turning because I've hadthat bad experience where, you
know, the the ball joint popsoff.
Now you're pretty much dead inthe water until you get another
one.

Yeah.
Yeah.
And that isn't

Jim Nedin (47:10):
so those are some adjustments that we ran into
early on.
You know, when the product wasfirst released and we were out
doing a lot of testing, a lot ofresearch with the units and
prototyping too.
But when it really hits theground is when you start to
learn more things because younow you have more product out
there,

Yeah.
Yeah.
More people using it.

Jim Nedin (47:30):
a bigger have a bigger audience using them and
they're, you know, trying to dotheir own thing with them as
well.
But there's there's been a lotof different things that run
into over the years with six 40eights.
For instance, I've, I was at agolf course oh, a number of
years ago, and oddly enough, thethe superintendent says to me,

(47:52):
this thing is rota tilling.
I mean, literally rota tillingwhenever we drop it in the
ground.
Then whenever we take it out ofthe ground at the other, on the
other end, it rota tills forabout a foot.
I mean it, he said it doesn't toit Rota.
Tills.
And so I'm listening to him andwe, we go down to a green and he

(48:15):
says to his operator, go ahead,fire it up.
So, well, we walked onto to it,but you know, it was warm.
Go ahead and fire it up.
And he fired it up.
And lo and behold, that sucker,I mean, it literally rota tilled
for about a foot or so, it'scleaned up.
After that, it was perfect tocross the green and then on, on

(48:35):
lift, same thing.
And I'm looking at that and Isaid, just do it one more time.
Well do it one more time.
And I said, well, yeah

Right?

Jim Nedin (48:47):
and so I, I kind of figured out what was going on.
So I walked over to the machineand I choked the engine.
I literally a full engine.
RPM, I just ran it until I hearda bellow, you know, a change in
the tone.

Yeah.

Jim Nedin (49:05):
It wasn't flooded, it wasn't flooding, it was, you
know, running richer.
I said, go ahead and try it.
It was perfect.
And I said, what's happening isthe engine's running lean.
So whenever you're putting theload on one of the head firing
up and the hydraulics activatingthis head, the engine takes a
droop, throws it out of timeuntil it can recoup.

(49:28):
And on the other end, when youhit hydraulic lift, the
hydraulics loads it up.
So what we wound up doing, hesaid, well, I chain.
He said I'm ahead of you here.
I put a carburetor kit in it.
I already changed the filter inthe you know, the sediment bowl
filter.
I said, I understand.
Did you clean the tank out?
He said, what are you talkingabout?

(49:51):
I said, let's go back up to theshop.
So we went up back up to theshop and we took and threw a
bunch of nuts and bolts in thetank and put kerosene, well
drained it, it was draining,kind of slow, put kerosene in
the tank and cleaned it outthree or four times, blew it
out, put it back together, andit was fine after that.
But what I learned is over theyears is even though you're, you

(50:12):
have a cap on that, and what wefound is that the sediment from
silt and sand and dust, and thatgets in that tank and starts to
lower the head pressure, we callhead pressure, the weight of the
fuel, even though there's a fuelpump, but it's still starving.
So, it was one quick fix.
So usually when I hear somebodysay that it's tufting or tufting

(50:34):
badly you know, I tell'em don'tget too creative with this.
Go out and choke it just untilyou hear the tone of the engine.
Change.
Give it a try.
See if that fixes it.
And a lot of times it does.
That's all it is.
And people are changing allkinds of things

Oh

Jim Nedin (50:50):
make things happen, you know?

Yeah.
That's a really good one.
Really good tip.
Now what it remind me,'cause Iknow I've messed with it before
when we were needle tying,there's some brackets that have
like two separate settings thatgo to the Rota link.
Dampeners.
I

Jim Nedin (51:08):
yes.
Right, right.
So, there's a standard setting.
There's a standard setting, andthat's the way the unit comes.
And then there's what we callstiffening the rotor link.
And stiffening the rotor link.
Kind of what it does itbasically does that because it,
it throws the rotor link on itslittle bit of an angle, so it's
not adjacent to, we have thatdog bone.

(51:29):
If you notice that dog bone, itgoes from the connecting,
connecting rod to the stomperarm, right?
And so it's a dog bone andthere's bearings on both ends.
And if you look at the way thatRota link is attached it's
pretty much in, in line withthat.
And and that's standardposition.
Whenever we stiffen the rotalink we drop the rotor link out

(51:53):
of its position by those twohalf inch, well, three quarter
inch knot on half inch, allthread.
Drop that out and we'll take thehalf the first half inch spacer
out and then reinstall thatrotor link.
So now the rota link's on aslight angle.
So it's not as adjacent, so it'smore difficult for that rotor

(52:14):
link to move.
And so basically, if you wouldlook at it like this as well, is
if we take a look at that rotorlink and we have this perfect
eight inch circle, that therotor link is allowing that air
fire to aerate.
And if we move this end up thatthis part is rotating, is
attached to it, turns it intomore like an egg on its end.

(52:36):
That's pretty dramatic.
But it, so it makes it more of avertical load going directly
into the ground instead of asweeping action.
So whenever your needle timingtypically so take, it'll take me
into something else here in asecond,

Okay.
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(53:12):
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Let's get back to the episode.

Jim Nedin (53:35):
So, so whenever you stiffen the rotor link, you're
raising up the backside of thatrotor link where the.
Where the rotor link actuallyis, that little shock absorber.
So it's making it more difficultto sway because it's raised up.
In addition to that, if younotice anyone that has a 6 48

(53:55):
notice, there's little rubberbumpers on that rotor link as
well.
Under the normal or standardposition, those rubber bumpers
are actually indexing or comingin contact with a half inch
aluminum spacer that isunderneath the deck.
So if you take the half inchspacer off the rotor link where

(54:18):
each of those studs are, and Iusually put'em up top.
Instead of putting'em in yourtoolbox, just put'em up top, put
the nut back on so you know thatthat it's been stiffened.
You need to take in those longslots at those half inch headed.
Cap screws are actually five 16,but half inch headed cap screws
and shove those aluminum blocksthat are underneath there.

(54:40):
So spacers far forward to theoperator.
And the reason for that is Ijust raised the rotor link by a
half inch.
Those rubber little dampersthat, that come in contact with
that spacer block underneaththere will now jam.

(55:01):
So if you want to see a, youwant to use a 6 48 as a
rototiller, leave those spacersback to where they are at for
the standard position becausethe rotor link cannot rotate
Those rubber are hitting.
So you wanna slide those forwardbecause we just raised this up.
Now those rubber dampers will beable to hit the bottom of the
deck.
So you gotta remember that.

(55:22):
So I run into that often.
And it shows you, well, it tellsyou in the book, but there's a
whole lot of information that'sgiven you at one time, right?
So, but if you're gonna go tothis stiffening the rotor link,
you need to slide those half inspacers ahead.
And if you notice where thosebolts are five 16 bolts with a
half inch flange heads on them,there's a slot, the slot within

(55:46):
its standard position, those thebolt goes all the way to the
back.
And whenever it's a stiffenedposition, the bolts go all the
way to the front.

Okay.

Jim Nedin (55:55):
and what I like to do is do half the machine, I'll do
half the machine stiffen, leavethe other half, you know,
standard and go airy and seewhat happens.
And if it says, wow, it's turnedout a lot better, then I notice
change of'em all.
But oddly enough, what I'vefound.
In, well, what is it?

(56:15):
2000?
2002.
2000.
So 2025.
So it's, you know, 20 some yearslater.
Oddly enough, what I find ismost people when they stiffen
the rotor link, they just leaveit that way.

Oh, okay.

Jim Nedin (56:31):
Well, here's why.
Now they take me on to whatbubbled up in my brain when we
were talking about stiffeningand rotary.
When we look at an air, a tidegoing into the ground, right?
What is holding that tide frommoving to give you a perfect to
is the earth.

(56:52):
So if I have a very smalldiameter, like a needle time,
right?
And the machine's movingforward, the time went into
ground, the machine's movingforward, which is the reason the
rotor links there to allow themachine to move forward while
that time is still in the groundand kind of working its way
through.
So a bigger th a half inch ththree quarter inch.

(57:16):
Th you typically won't see anissue with that because the
thine is large enough in, its inits diameter to hold itself in
the turf without any movement.
But whenever you get down tolike a solid 200000th time,
which is one of my favoritetimes, they're, you know, five

(57:36):
and a half, six inches andthey're solid 200 thousandths in
diameter, or a needle time eightmillimeter, which is about
200,000.
So, you know, they're about fivemillimeter.
Yeah, they're a little small.
I don't know that they do atremendous amount of good other
than giving it a little bit ofoxygen for a small amount of

(57:57):
time before everything closesback up, but none nonetheless,
it's, you know, ev everybody hastheir own choice.
But so that's the reason youwanna stiffen a rotor link with
a needle ty or a small tiebecause you want to shorten, you
know, because of that drag inbetween the tiny going in and
coming out, you want more of avertical if you're in hard

(58:19):
conditions, like my backyardhere is probably pretty much
shale and granite, we go downabout two inches, right?
So, so I I borrowed a, an eight6 48 when we first moved here,
13, 12, 13 years ago.
And I put solid times on it,five, eight solid times.

(58:40):
And before I even took it outtathe garage, I stiffened the
Rotax and that thing did somedancing.
I want to tell you yes, somereal dancing in my backyard on
the hillside.
Now I did discover that six 40eights are actually terrible on
the hillside going along thehillside they will bounce.

(59:00):
And want to, you know, govertical, horizontal, or
vertical.
I have my grade in the frontier.
I had a vent track here twoyears ago using the the elevator
and it's over 30 degrees.
I was scared to death that thingwas gonna flip over or on top of
me.
And that bless you.

(59:21):
That 6 48 climbed right up thatover 30 degree slope.

Oh, wow.

Jim Nedin (59:26):
I had put a little pressure on the front tire, of
course but it climbed right upthere.
I was shocked.
'Cause I never One on that steepof a slope before.
And since I was borrowing itfrom a distributor I didn't
wanna have to need to buy one

Yeah.
Yeah.

Jim Nedin (59:42):
it, But at any rate, that was, yeah, so that was kind
of surprising.
There's a whole lot of thingswith the 6 48 that it's the
simplest machine in the worldfor an operator to operate, but
there's a lot of things goingon.
You know, there's basicallythree electrical modes that we
talk about.
And there's a lot of symmetry aswell.
So there's, there, there are sixrelays.

(01:00:04):
They're all identically thesame.
there are six magnetic switches.
Sensor switches are allidentically the same two ball
switches, which are on theautomatic round following
system, they're both the same.
There are four diodes.
They're identically the same.
So you don't need a whole lot ofparts if you're into the
electronic or electrical side ofthe world, you know.

(01:00:26):
But we use the diodes in certainways.
We use them we call latching.
So in other words, whenever youpush the button to lower the
head and push the button downit's a latching relay, through,
through the grounding thatcontinues through that relay.
And what that does, it's kind oflike your it's it's kind of like

(01:00:48):
you're on your car where youhave your you know, you, your,
where you go on a distance andyou just go ahead and put it in,
you know, auto speed orwhatever.
And so until you tell it, untilyou touch the brake on the car,
right?
And then it,

Trent Manning (01:01:03):
Yeah.
Yeah.

Jim Nedin (01:01:03):
it, it stops.
But the same thing with the 648.
Until you leave, go of that liftbale or tell it to come up, it's
gonna continue to air.
So, we use the relays in a lotof different ways with that
unit.
And the hydraulic system ispretty unique as well.
So with the 6 48, if you everlooked on the manifold, there
are three solenoids there's, ifyou look at the wiring diagram

(01:01:28):
or all them remarked, it'll haveSVR for.
Solenoid Rays, it'll have SVLfor solenoid lower, it'll have
SVQ and that stands for quick.
So the way the 6 48 operates iswhenever you're lowering the
head, it uses two paths of oilto allow that 650 pound head to

(01:01:53):
push the oil out of thiscylinder.
So it drops pretty quickly.
When you go to raise, itactivates SVR and SVQ to give
you two paths of oil to raisethe head quickly.
However, when it's in groundfollowing and it's following the
left and right turf guard itshuts off SVQ so that now we

(01:02:15):
only have half the oil flow whenthe head goes into a low spot.
It says to lower the head or toraise the head.
That's gonna do it nice andgracefully now because we cut
half of the oil flow off, so inground following s VQs not used,
which takes me to another partof the, if you experience at the

(01:02:39):
beginning or at the end of apass or maybe both tufting,
pretty good tufting and you tryit with the engine thing as far
as choking the engine a littlebit, doesn't fix it.
What I always tell people willdo, next thing you want to do is
reach on and just pop off theSVQ connector on that solenoid,

(01:03:03):
okay?
Because the head may be droppingfaster than it needs to, which
is kind of thrown it out.
Its time and sequence with thespeed that the machine's
traveling, the rotation of thehead.
All those things have to workpretty well together.
So what we're doing is we'reslowing down the drop speed of
that, and then at the oppositeend, we're slowing the lift

(01:03:24):
speed of that.
So you need a about foot and ahalf or better.
You can operate that way therest of it's life it doesn't
know.
It doesn't care, okay.
It's just not gonna drop fasteror raise faster.
You can operate it the rest ofits leg.
However, what that is saying isif everything cleans up, it's
telling you that the head isdropping and raising too

(01:03:44):
quickly.
Ah, okay.
So Toro makes an orifice thatgoes in the, on the monoblock or
what I call OID block, where thehose comes out.
If you take that fitting out,there is, there are three eight
threads in there and they make aan Allen set screw that has a a

(01:04:09):
16 t drill hole in it.
You run that in, don't run it inhard, just run it in until she
stops.
No pressure on it whatsoever.
The oil's not gonna go anywhereand run that fitting back in.
Now what it doesn't slow it downas much as disconnecting the
SVQ, but it slows it downprobably 50% of that.
And it typically will cure that.

(01:04:31):
So that's typically what I useas a guide to say, ah, we need
an orifice in that to slow thedrop and to slow the lift when
the SVQ is connected.

So did they not always have the orifice there?
So it's a optional

Jim Nedin (01:04:49):
that's an option.
That is

you can add later.
Okay.
And then what about it?
Didn't they do something?
They come up with the bracketwhere the proximity switches are
A little bit of a change

Jim Nedin (01:05:03):
Right.
So yeah, early on we had anissue with number three.
Number three is the clutchactivation switch.
And so we came up with a bracketthat went on the tubular frame
and a different bracket to kindof, allow that switch to
activate a little quicker sothat so that the, it was at full

(01:05:27):
rotation by the time it got intothe turf because it was kind of
marginal that the head was mayberunning not at full RPM when it
got into the turf.
And having said that then thething would be under stress and
it would be out of time until itcleaned itself up.
So early on we came up with alittle kit and there was a

(01:05:47):
bulletin on that and so on andso forth.
So that, that was early on.
And then.
I would say in probably in thelast three, five, maybe four or
five years, they came up withnumber four switch, which is the
target switch for for activatingthe turf guard as far as

(01:06:10):
automatic ground following thedepth.
So what would happen is if youlowered the head down to where
it was in a funky letter thatwasn't clearly H or clearly A,
somewhere in the middle, thehead would drop and start to
bounce as it was going over thechart.
'cause it's saying, I'm notquite sure where to go here.

(01:06:31):
So basically we came out with adifferent bracket and a way to
adjust that switch to either in.
You know, holes, A, the wholeposition A or whole position B,
if in fact you're gonna use itfrom A through, I don't know, C
let's say, and then from D to HImay have the lettering a little

(01:06:51):
wrong, but to clearly help thatswitch understand the depth at
which you're going to use it.
And that's been very helpfulbecause we started to get, some
people are really trying to finetune this unit and so on and so
forth.
And so we did come up with that.
That's for number four switch.
So the way the system works iswhen the head's all the way up,

(01:07:15):
number one, solenoid or numberone switch then recognizes it's
all the way up.
And the solenoids are shut off.
There's no power to thesolenoid, so the heads are up
because there's a ball checkball in the system that holds
the head up.
Whenever you're going to aerify,if you've ever noticed and take

(01:07:38):
a very close look you hit theswitch to lower the head and it
drops ever so slightly andwhenever it drops ever so
slightly, number one saying, I'mokay with dropping.
And now it ignites Number two.
Number two turns on the solenoidvalves.
So whatever you're telling it todo through the rocker switch

(01:08:00):
lower, it's activating thosecorrect solenoid valves.
Now, as it drops a little bitlower, it now activates the
clutch'cause the head's stillnot in the ground, but we went
full rotation of the head andthen whenever it gets down to
where the ground followingstarts to come into play, number
four is now activated.
And so that, that's how that alloperates.

(01:08:23):
So if you should fall off of thelift bale, that all reverses,
right?
I always have told people in mytraining and that the machine is
not happy until the head ishome.
Head is home is up, it's lazy,it doesn't wanna work.
Heads up, it's home, right?
So we're forcing it to stay downthrough our different you know,

(01:08:45):
things that we apply,electronically or electrically
to the solenoids and so on andso forth to get the head in
position to operate.
But it doesn't wanna stay down.
It wants to come up, right?
So the head weighs 650 pounds.
We can make it weigh, 770 realfast.
And that's through, if younotice on the head, there are

(01:09:06):
two long springs on the head andup at the top where those
springs are fastened through thelittle lengths.
The bracket goes back to theframe and at the, at, on each of
those brackets that hold thespring, there's a half inch
hole, square hole in there.
And that bracket is designed toput a breaker bar in there.

(01:09:30):
And what you would do is youtake the back bolt nut off,
apply pressure, and then takethe bolt out and push back on
that.
So you're gonna raise andstretch the spring even further.
And then put the bolt in thelower hole.
When you do that on each side,then it makes that headway 770

(01:09:52):
pounds.
cause you're stretching that,remember, it's dead weight, it's
pushing the oil out of thatcylinder.
It's a single acting cylinder.
There's no not two orifices inthat cylinder.
So having said that, we reallyoverbuilt this machine.
Having said that.
Let's say you're in some hardpan and it wasn't aerating, the

(01:10:12):
head was bouncing and now youstart to aerate and you're in
some hard pan tees that maybehave never been AED in their
life, that kind of thing, andthe whole machine starts
bouncing.
If you would take a look at thetube that goes across the
machine where the wheel motorsare installed, the rear wheel
motors are installed.

(01:10:33):
If you looked at that tube, youwould see that there are two
right angle, arms weld to thatvertically, and there are holes
in that angle iron that's twoinstalled, two 60 pound cast
iron weights.
So now you're reapplying theweight to the machine so that
the whole machine doesn't bounceup and down.

(01:10:53):
I haven't seen that very oftendone, but we really overbuilt
this machine when we designedit.
And 6 48 s has the sameattributes.

Okay.

Jim Nedin (01:11:04):
That kind of thing.
The s is the newer newer unitwith a lot more electronic bells
and whistles.

but if you are verifying hard paying, you can.
Implement the springs and that'sgonna help some.

Jim Nedin (01:11:19):
Yes.
And it may help all you need,but if a whole machine starts
bouncing, it's slamming around,then you can add two 60 pound
cast iron weights, which thengive it the same, because with
the head, all we're doing iswe're taking the weight off of
the tractor and putting it onthe head.
Right.
We're not making more weight,we're just transferring weight.

(01:11:41):
But if we now need to applyweight to make the whole machine
way heavier, we can add two 60pound cast iron weights to the
unit.

That's awesome.
That's

Jim Nedin (01:11:52):
whenever we look at how the machine is to operate in
a turf, we always want 12 poundsof air in the tires.
Never anymore.
Never any less.
It is a series parallel systemin the drive system.
So series parallel means thatfront wheel is always pulling no
matter what.
That front wheel is alwaysdoing.

(01:12:14):
The job it's taking on it, it'sa higher capacity.
Front motor dual double thecapacity of the rear motors.
So it's a higher capacity frontmotor.
The oil's passing through thefront motor and then being
shared by the two rear wheelmotors, which is parallel.
So we have series paralleldrive, so we always have at

(01:12:37):
least two wheels driving themachine on a perfect, in a
perfect situation where we havethe same amount of resistant to
all the wheels and tires, thenall three are pulling.
But it's kind of funny, if youwould take that machine.
And and jack up one side of thatmachine in the rear and only had

(01:12:59):
two wheels, the front wheel andthe left wheel, let's say on
turf surface, and the rightwheel up off of the turf
surface, that rear right wheelthat's up off the turf surface
would not be spinning any fasterthan the left wheel because it's
sharing the amount of flow.

Yeah.

Jim Nedin (01:13:20):
it's a very unique design.
That's the way the 3,500 GroundsMaster operates.
And other, well, you're you thethree wheel fairway mowers and
so forth, that's the way theyoperate in the same fashion.

Okay.
Yeah.

Jim Nedin (01:13:35):
yeah, series Parallel System.
Toro still is, I think prettymuch is the only one that come
up with that.
May, maybe others have takenthat technology these days, but
I'm not saying they haven't.
But

Well, yeah.
Is that similar to like the 55,10?
I remember it had the crosstracks.

Jim Nedin (01:13:53):
So 55, 10 cross tracks is a little unique in
that in the hydrostat itselfthere's a shuttle valve, what we
call a shuttle valve thatshuttles back and forth.
If the front left wheel sees 500pounds less resistance in
turning, in other words, it'sabout to spin, it now sends that
energy to the rear left wheelversa.

(01:14:16):
So it's costly.
Guess why it's called crosstracks.
So it's constantly dancing backand forth, and that's why it's
such a superior for lack ofbetter term, four wheel drive
unit.
I've been on a golf course, itwas called Ledge Rock.
And it truly was ledge rock.
I mean, they lost a lot ofwalking greens mores over cliffs

(01:14:38):
on this ledge rock.
But I was Alan Fitzgerald, whois, down on the Cape right now.
and he was at Ledge Rock, and Ibecame very good friends with
Alan, and I would go out thereto see him, you know, maybe once
a year.
And we stopped one time on thisfairway, and I thought that I

(01:14:58):
felt like I was on arollercoaster.
I thought I was gonna roll outof the golf cart over the hood.
And we stopped there and it wasso steep, honest to gosh, Trent.
And I said to Alan, I said, howdo you mow this?
He says, with a 54 10.
I said, get outta here.
I said, I mean, I'm a Toro guy

yeah.

Jim Nedin (01:15:20):
ain't no way I said it when it's damp or wet.
He says, yeah, it climbs rightup.
But I said, do you have to mowit on a bias or sideways?
He says, no, it's the onlymachine that we've ever had that
could do that.
You know, you don't put any kindof weight in the wheel or weight
in tires.
And he said, no, it is what itis.
So, yeah, I was blown away thatyeah.

(01:15:41):
Alan Fitzgerald at LED Rock.
It was

Okay.
That is crazy.

Jim Nedin (01:15:46):
Yeah.

any, what, anything else on the 6 48?

Jim Nedin (01:15:50):
Oh, there's tons of stuff on a six foot

Well, so what I'm thinking here

Jim Nedin (01:15:55):
what would you like to know?
What, so, so give me a how.
Let's do this.
Gimme a scenario, gimme asituation that maybe you've
encountered or someone'sencountered that you know of.
And let's see if let's see if wecan figure out a solution for
it.

okay.
Yeah.
No, I think that's great.
One thing I'm thinking though,'cause we're an hour and 20 in

Jim Nedin (01:16:17):
Oh, no.
Are we, oh, Lordy.

just goes so quick man.
And I love every minute of it,so Yeah.
Don't apologize.
Don't

Jim Nedin (01:16:24):
spent half the time talking about something we
weren't gonna talk

Well, that's okay.
That's okay.
I think we spend some more timetalking about 6 48 and then
we'll just come back again ifyou're

Jim Nedin (01:16:33):
Okay.
No, that's

and

Jim Nedin (01:16:35):
I'm enjoying this slide now.
If you hear negative things fromyour audience, then we will not
do it again.

I, well, yeah, no I'm not worried about that at
all.
I enjoy, I mean, honestly, thisis my favorite part of the whole
deal is, you know, getting tointerview people like yourself
and everybody else that I get tomeet in the industry, it's very
rewarding.
And I get to learn just as muchas anybody that's listening to
this,

Jim Nedin (01:17:01):
Well, I

you know, I mean, I enjoyed that and I do
appreciate you being here.
I'm trying to think of thescenario.
So we got the WhatsApp group andone of the guys was asking, he
was having some issues with his6 48.
And he had pretty much doneeverything, but I don't remember

(01:17:22):
exactly what the problem was.
That's the problem.
But I have seen, and I wanted toask your opinion on it.
I've seen, and I've done itmyself when we used the 10 time
holder, we only put in fivetimes and we put, I think, you
know, as you're operating themachine, three in the back, two

(01:17:44):
in the front,

Jim Nedin (01:17:45):
Okay.

I think is, you know, the way they're staggered.

Jim Nedin (01:17:48):
Okay.
And the ones in the back wearmore than the ones in the front?

I don't know that I've noticed

Jim Nedin (01:17:53):
Yeah.
That's by design.
They do.
Yeah.
I always get I always getquestioned about that, man I got
10 times in this thing and theback times where.
And I said, yep, they do.

Why is that?

Jim Nedin (01:18:07):
flip em out.
It's just the angle of the head,the way it goes in and comes
outta the ground.
It that's just part of thenature.
Now let me give you a littletip, and I don't know if maybe,
you know, if it's a tip, is on aa side eject time, always mount
the times so that the hole ofthe time is going left or right,
not to the back.

Ah, okay.

Jim Nedin (01:18:29):
You'll get a much cleaner hole.
And the reason for that is whenthe time's coming out of the
ground, that window, the bottompart of that window can catch on
the edge of the turf, always goleft or right.
And people look at me like I'mcross-eyed whenever, you know,
like, what are you talking?
But, you know, that's what we'velearned over the years.

(01:18:51):
Always left or right never wannago front, of course but, you
know, avoid going back to the.
Go left or right

I've always.
Yeah.
Pointed them to the back.

Jim Nedin (01:19:02):
much, much cleaner hole.
The other thing that I just wantto bring up and then we can
probably close out the eveningis that I often find folks that
will adjust the rod for thedepth.
Okay.
And there's a process for thatand put it in h and then down at
the turf guard, we lift up theturf guard to locate that that

(01:19:24):
little hollow stud that's weldedto the frame.
And we shove a a five sixteensbolt in there.
And that is to simulate h we goto the outer switch operator
position, outer switch to the orthe right.
And we.
Then want that switch to give uscontinuity when it's in H.

(01:19:44):
And if it doesn't give uscontinuity in H then we would
adjust that rod so that we getthe little beep while it's in H
And that should then simulatethe machine being at its deepest
depth.
Always remember to take the boltback out when you're done.
However, it's of no value to dothat unless you check the
bushings in the hinge.

Oh, okay.

Jim Nedin (01:20:06):
you wanna do that is go to the opposite side of the
machine.
So you have your springs thatare creating your down pressure.
Go to the opposite side.
And I found so many machinesthat I could raise and lower
that hinge by probably threesixteenths of an inch or so So
what happens is this, when itgets so bad and people have an

(01:20:28):
H, they will start to see.
Actually grooves being cut intothe turf as they're airing.
And the reason that for that,the machine's going so much
deeper than h because thebushings are bad.
And the, actually the carriagebolt heads are rubbing into the

(01:20:50):
turf profile.
So you always need to make surethat the hinge is in good shape,
that the bushings have minimalwear.
And what I mean by that is ifyou move'em up and down a 16th
or something, you're probablyokay.
But if they move up and down,I've seen'em already three
sixteenths of an inch orsomething.
If you let'em wear so badthey're brass and they're keyed,

(01:21:11):
no grease whatsoever.
You know, because the grease

Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Jim Nedin (01:21:16):
dirt don't like each other.
But they're keyed.
If you let them go too far,you'll wipe out the brackets.
Now you're talking a lot ofmoney,

Ah,

Jim Nedin (01:21:25):
wipe out the hinge, the bracket.
You know, the everything on on,in that area.
So you really want to keep aneye on that.
So every once in a while go overand grab the other, the opposite
end of where the spring load isand see if you can raise and
lower you know that, and it'seasy to do.
Just go ahead and give it a

yeah.

Jim Nedin (01:21:43):
And if you've got some pretty good motion there.
So next time, perhaps we'll talkabout how do you check the
timing of a 6 48 to see if thekeys are going bad in the crank?

I don't, I mean, we got, let's do it.

Jim Nedin (01:21:57):
Okay,

That's

Jim Nedin (01:21:58):
so if the keys are bad in the, in, in your in your
crank arm, there's four keys.
They're quarter by an inch.
They're special hardened.
And what'll happen is the

That's good to know.
Too special harden,

Jim Nedin (01:22:14):
Yeah, so it's a Toro.
Don't go to Napa and buy somekey stock and cut it off.
Use the correct keys.
Originally we used the too hardof a key and it wiped out the
journals in the crank arms.
And then we went to soft of akey, and then we were having key
shear.
So it took a little bit of, youknow, time to figure this out.

(01:22:37):
So now it's to the point wherethe key is hard and it'll, it
will shear.
You know, and hopefully you'llcatch it before it does do dims,
but I've seen key shear thatwill literally take that crank,
that upper crank, and turn itinto a pretzel.
I mean, you are talkingcatastrophic failure.
I've seen it on 1290 eights,eight 60 fours, 6, 6 40 eights.

(01:23:01):
So what you want to doperiodically is you want to make
sure that those keys aren'tsheared Now.
It doesn't tell you anywhere atall in any book on how to do
this.
And this is something that wecame up with that in the field.
It never made it to the books.
I don't know, it's just not in aservice manual, but I

(01:23:23):
demonstrate this every singletime I hold class.
I have pictures in my PowerPointon how to do it.
basically what we want to do isto go to number one, which is
where the flywheel is, where thepulley is.
And we want to rotate that towhere number one lines up with
with the casting high spot onthe casting.

(01:23:45):
And if you look across thatcrank, that whole crank assembly
number six should be lined upright on that as well.
If number six, if you see isthrusted forward a bit there's
probability of the keys startingto shear.
And the reason that's thrustforward is the break.
Is on the pulley side.

(01:24:05):
So the brake comes on, but wehave inertia all the way over at
number six where this crank isspinning, right?
And so it now the keys loadmoving forward.
So, when you look at the timingmark for number six against the
crest on the casting, and ifit's pushed forward, you know, a
quarter of an inch or something,that, that might be an

(01:24:26):
indication.
So here's what I always do.
I note that first, where that'sat, and then what I will do is I
will turn the number one,there's a big fly weight on
number one.
It looks like a crescent flyweight as part of a casting.
I will turn that to where it'sfairly close to the bottom and

(01:24:52):
you can take between the pulleyitself and the.
Extrusion of the crank and dropa two by four down vertically
against the firewall.
And now whenever you turn alittle bit more, that Flyway
jams against that two by four.
Okay, so now the crank can'tmove on the flywheel side, it's

(01:25:15):
jammed against the two by four.
I go all the way over to numbersix on that fly weight and I'll
take a big pipe wrench, maybeeven a three foot bar, and I
will dance up and down on thatpuppy.
Then I will take the two by fourout, take the pipe wrench off of

(01:25:35):
course, turn it back to numberone and see where number six is.
Now, if number six is going aquarter of an inch in the
opposite direction, I know I'vegot a half inch from pinned key
to pinned key in the oppositedirection.
And so you wanna start thinkingabout.

(01:25:57):
Should I rebuild this head andput new keys, new bearings?
We do recommend every 500running hours.
Original books never said that.
But a digging through thearchives, I found that now there
it is published in the servicemanual.
The recommendation is every 500hours to inspect.

(01:26:18):
So that's part of the inspectingto see where they go.
Okay.
And if, and I don't know if youdo podcasts where someone's
showing a PowerPointpresentation.
I don't

I mean, yeah, we could definitely, that would be
awesome to do.

Jim Nedin (01:26:36):
you know, and then I don't need to be the focus, this
old guy, you're looking at mefor hours.

Oh, no.
Yeah.
No.
Yeah.
'cause I mean, with thisprogram, we can share a screen,
we can do whatever.

Jim Nedin (01:26:49):
So, that, that way it makes it a bit.
Clear, more what we're trying toachieve.
But yeah, so it's very importantto, to to really make sure you
do check the the keys in thecrank assembly so that you don't
have a catastrophic failure.

Well, and won't those, like what you're
explaining there, doesn't thekeys start to shear or where for
a period before they let go?

Jim Nedin (01:27:16):
well, so they micro shear, you know what I mean?
So what I mean by that is youmay take it apart and say that,
that guy was full of crap.
I don't see anything here.
If you take your thumbnail andgo across where the, you know,
the key is engaged in the lowerportion, in the upper portion,
if you feel a change with yourthumbnail that's starting to
micro shear.

Okay.

Jim Nedin (01:27:37):
So number one key.
At number one crank shears themost because it's driving the
whole train of six crank arms,right?
So it's taking the brunt of theload because it's driving all of
the rest.
So you just want to keep that inmind.
That typically number one, butwhenever you rebuild it after
500 running hours, which isrecommended bearings and

(01:28:00):
whatnot, you just get the keysas well and, you know, put new
keys in and you should be goodto go.

Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I got one that Ineed to do pretty soon.
I've done one, but that wasseveral years ago,

Jim Nedin (01:28:13):
Yeah.
And they're not made, they're,yeah, they're not designed to
come apart easily.
You have to apply some pressure.
'cause we want it very tight.
You know, you have splines,that's something different, but
where your connecting rods areso to speak.
You'll notice at the top of theconnecting rod, there's a little
high spot.
It's like an additional amountof casting.

(01:28:35):
That's where the keys areunderneath there.

Okay.

Jim Nedin (01:28:38):
so you, you have two a female and a male portion that
go, that, that adjoin, thatconnecting rod in half and half,
and that's where that key goes.
So there, there are, as I say,there are four of them across
the breast to that.

Do you know what type of Anies Toro uses, like
brand or any of that stuff?

Jim Nedin (01:29:00):
I think it's just anti Cs.

Anti see, because Well, in the,

Jim Nedin (01:29:05):
they don't use copper, you know, the copper
antice or anything like

Yeah.
Well, the reason I asked, Iremember when I took the 6 48
apart last time, I could notbelieve how pristine all the
Anes looked, and this machinewas 15 years old

Jim Nedin (01:29:22):
yeah, but I, it, I don't know that there's.
I mean, I've been down at the, Iused to go down at a factory
quite often.
I didn't notice any brand nameor

Yeah.
Like Perx or

Jim Nedin (01:29:34):
spec.
I'm sure it is probably Perx, ifyou will.
You know, that's, you prettymuch your popular brand of anti
seeds.
Right.
That's what I have.
But you know, I don't know forsure, but you know, I know that
I don't know any brand name thatthey used to be quite honest
with you.

Yeah.
I was just curious'cause I wasimpressed at how good it looked
after that many years.

Jim Nedin (01:29:57):
Well hopefully no dirt got in, so if no dirt got
in Right.
To contaminate it.

yeah.
Yeah.
True.
Very true.
Well, yep.
Thank you again Jim, for beingon and I, if the offer is there,
I would like to do thePowerPoint

Jim Nedin (01:30:15):
Well, sure.
Yeah, I think that,

would be awesome.

Jim Nedin (01:30:18):
I have.

To do and,'cause I've been putting these on
YouTube and all that too.
I mean, that would be great.

Jim Nedin (01:30:24):
sure.
I mean, yeah, no, I'd be happyto do that.
I think it explains it a littlebetter than me just kind of
holding my hands up

Right, right, right.
Yeah,

Jim Nedin (01:30:32):
makes it a little more true to life.
You know, as far as what we'retrying to, what I'm trying to
explain.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, we can figure that out.

Thank you so much for listening to the Reel turf
techs podcast.
I hope you learned somethingtoday.
Don't forget to subscribe.
If you have any topics you'dlike to discuss, or you'd like
to be a guest, find us onTwitter at Reel turf techs.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 154: Jim Nedin Returns

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Episode 154: Jim Nedin Returns

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