Seems to be a good mower, just posting to help those who need to buy a mower.
Product Description
4-stroke, 173cc engine
Self-propelled with 7 height adjustments (25-75mm)
65L catcher
20" cutting width
Mulching function and side discharge
Weight: 38kgˇ
Cutting your grass just became easier with this Ferrex 173cc Petrol Lawn Mower
Maintaining your lawn is now a breeze
Ignore the self propelling if you are fit. Get a used Victa from Gumtree for $200, should last you at least 50 years. Will also weigh 10 kilo less.
I bought a massport 19inch 190cc for 50 bucks yesterday , its a beast
FB marketplace is your freind.
There was a Hyundai Lawn mower on amazon for $320 but thats sold out.
I still love using the bosch arm 37 i got for $110 on amazon, its a beast and can cut through semi long grass. Frayed the cable a few times but have a plies and some electrical tape handy to repair.
Or until they ban 2stroke/4stroke gardening tools.
Fossil fuel will be banned by 2050, probably earlier
I bought one like this about 8 years ago from Aldi. I have abused the crap out of it, only added oil a couple of times and the thing keeps running. I love the self propelled mode, makes it that much easier. I'm guessing they still use a Briggs motor in these like a lot of other brands do. In anycase it has been a fantastic mower
I have the same experience. The spring that engages the self propulsion fell off at some point, but I didn't bother replacing it. I never serviced it. I was gifted a near new mower and left the Aldi one unused for almost a year before selling it. When the buyer turned up I realised that I hadn't even tried starting it since last using it, but it started first time.
They havent used Briggs and Stratton motors in them for a long time, they are copies of the Honda engines. The copies arent a bad motor and variations of them are used in all of the cheap mowers you see on Ebay etc. If looked after there is no reason why it wont keep going. The main thing which craps out on the engines is leaving fuel in it for long periods of time when not in use, so it gums up the carby and stops the mower from starting.
Especially ethanol based fuels!
I always have to buy a new one cause the blades get dull. Guess the verge collectioners have their lucky day
You're joking right?
Try getting new blades for these :)
grinder and sharper them
That would be the logical thing to do to prolong them, and if your blades are getting that beat up and chipped I'd be more concerned about what you are hitting
Possibility a Second Hand Honda, if you can find one in reasonable condition. Sometimes Facebook marketplace or gumtree will have some Honda models for sale.
How about electric mowers? Are they any good?
Yep - the generate the highest power just before they stall, so if they can mechanically go through a tussocky bit of neglected paddock, they won't stall like petrol engine but tear through then hum up to speed again. They are also usually a lot lighter. I'd still go for a 3.5 cu or higher petrol engine if I was tilling or finding dog toys or the toddler's tricycle at the same time though.
For the price, it's not bad, however my points on it are:
There's probably no mowers you should put E10 in, is my theory.
Personally I'd rather just buy a used Victa or something with a briggs and stratton engine. I went for a walk the other day around my suburb and saw 2 separate guys mowing their lawns with 1980s/90s Victas, still going strong. I actually get annoyed when I see people buying the plastic junk mowers and binning them after 7 years and buying another one, when you can keep a good mower running for 50+ years with the tiniest bit of maintenance. I much prefer the idea of buying once, buying right, and keeping it running. And in this case you can buy once for cheaper if you buy used, and it will likely far outlast the new chinese stuff.
E10 is ok if you look after it such as always using fresh fuel and running it dry prior to winter.
Those old Briggs engines are the most robust and easy to work on mowers. The mower I use is a 20 year old Rover with the Briggs engine.
In terms of new mowers, unless you go a Honda, everything else is pretty ordinary. The newer Briggs engines have their fair share of issues and with everything the quality isnt there and they arent built to last.
"Those old Briggs engines are the most robust and easy t"
I don't think you got them here - the Temusceh "Iron Horse" two stoke.
https://www.outdoorking.com/forum/uploads/usergals/2011/11/f…
I had three recovered from the local tip, and every spring after a winter of neglect, I would strip down the one used the year before, choose the best looking bits from the three, slap it back together, pour in the fuel, pull the cord and start mowing. I got it down to 20 minutes start to finish using the Caterpillar butyl(? )gasket creator. The most complex part on them were the 30 or so needle rollers in two steal backing shells in the big end.
The B&S were robust, but being four stoke did have valve-grinding and clearances to be sorted…
Can a self propelled help with a steep yard? I have a long strip of grass running down the side of my property which is not practical to do in lots of small parallel runs across the slope as it only about the width of a driveway. I’m fit but pushing a manual mower up the hill scares me so I turn it off and drag it to the top so I am always only going downhill
Run from this thing….
I bought a prior version of this thinking how can you go wrong, it has a 3 year warranty…… On the 3rd use it fell apart just after the return to store period so I made a warranty claim. The parts for this mower all come from different factories that were just the ones that had the lowest bid on the day, no brand just some random factory in China who won the tender for a wheel or axle or discreet component. The poor company that does Aldi's warranties spent 11 months just trying to find which companies, and there were lots of them, to get the parts needed. A year later I could finally use the mower for it's 4th mow! Absolute piece of junk.
anyone recommend this or anything around this price point?