Episode 154: Jim Nedin Returns

Welcome to the Reel Turf Techs Podcast, Episode 154

Industry legend Jim Nedin returns to share his deep knowledge of the Toro ProCore 648 and how to get the most out of this aerifier. Jim walks us through setup, tine selection, and maintenance tips that make a real difference out on the turf. We also touch on sprayers and cutting units, exploring more of Jim’s time-tested insights into precision and performance. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or an industry newbie, this episode is packed with practical knowledge and advanced techniques from one of the brightest minds in the industry to help you achieve superior turf health and appearance.

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Transcript

Trent Manning: 0:57

Welcome to the reel turf techs podcast for the technician that wants to get reel follow along. As we talk to industry professionals and address hot topics that we all face along the way we'll learn tips and tricks. I'm your host, Trent. Manning let's have some Welcome to The Reel Turf Techs Podcast, episode 1 54. Industry legend Jim Nedin returns to share his deep knowledge of the Toro Procore 6 48 and how to get the most out of this air fire. Jim walks us through set up maintenance tips that makes a real difference out on the turf. We also touch on cutting units. Exploring more of Jim's time tested insight into precision and performance. It's another can't miss episode packed with practical knowledge from one of the most respected minds in the turf industry. Let's get real with Jim Nedin. Welcome, Jim to the Real Turf Text podcast. Thanks for being on again.

Jim Nedin: 2:11

Well, thank you very much. Happy to be here with you again, Trent.

Trent Manning: 2:14

No, it's exciting and you are one of the most knowledgeable people in the industry. I don't know how you are able to retain all the knowledge from all the years,'cause you've been doing this a long time. But I'm very thankful that you agreed to come back on and last time we talked about cutting units for almost two hours. And I'm not gonna say that we won't dive into that again, but this time I was kind of thinking we would talk about 6 48 air fires and sprayers.

Jim Nedin: 2:50

Okay. No, that sounds good. Yeah, we're probably about halfway through on the on the reels.

Trent Manning: 2:56

okay. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 2:59

but just getting well, I mean, I did review our podcast together. You did a really great job of interviewing me. I appreciate that.

Trent Manning: 3:07

Oh, well,

Jim Nedin: 3:08

you know, there, there were a little, a few more, little tidbits, but nonetheless you know, I'm ready to move on as well as if you are, we

Trent Manning: 3:17

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

Jim Nedin: 3:24

not necessarily. I just think as far as, you know, looking at the elements or the reality that turf is a living organism and the, if we can treat it well, it doesn't like to be cut. It wants to grow to seed. And we do cause stress every time we mow. So if in fact we can, especially with reels and finer turfs, just as bent grass and oh, any of the fine turf species, that if we can cut it to its liking, which is. It doesn't like it anyway. But if we can cut it to where that, the point of that hydrogen peroxide that I spoke about, I believe I spoke about hydrogen peroxide can really do its job and seal and heal that plant so that it can live another day, so to speak. And the reduction of chemicals then is pretty dramatic from the University of Nebraska. Did a study on that a number of years ago. And for airborne pathogen disease that gets into the plant their study had shown that you can reduce chemical application up to 60%

Trent Manning: 4:35

Wow.

Jim Nedin: 4:35

by simply cutting to the, cutting the grass to its likeness. Meaning what it would prefer was a, is a very sharp, clean cut so that it can seal and heal as quickly as possible. So, a lot more you know, that I've researched over the years. A lot more studies that I've been involved with and have certainly read about and professors that are just phenomenal over the years that are here with us today. And some have passed, but you know, so, so real technology has been something that I've been involved with for, I don't know, decades. and, it's always just been a passion for me as aerators and sprayers for sure. I think I mentioned to you the last time in the last episode that I started out with sprayers as far as doing work for the G-C-S-A-A back in the, early eighties. And worked with Alan Hayes, who was an employee of the G-C-S-A-A at that time. And we created the first I guess, guide for. Re-certifying spray technicians

Trent Manning: 5:43

Ah, okay.

Jim Nedin: 5:44

yeah. So, and he brought me into the fold, so to speak. So, That's how I got involved in that. And I'm I'm just referencing that, but I did speak to that, I think pretty in depth during our last podcast, so

Trent Manning: 5:57

Were you working for the Toro company at that

Jim Nedin: 5:59

no. I was working for, eh, Griffith in, in the Pittsburgh area at that time. And you know, there was a superintendent at Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier, pa, and his name was John Kobi. And John passed away from cancer a number of years ago. But I, John was on the board at the G-C-S-A-A and I didn't know that, but I was in Western Pennsylvania doing a lot of training, sprayer training, and sprayers were kind of crude back then. We didn't have, all the sophistication we have today was sprayers, but they, the end result is they still do the same thing that they did back then if they were calibrated correctly. So, you know, I started out with a few people. As far as visiting a few people, and it kind of grew from there. And then it started to turn into seminars. And back then I didn't have PowerPoint or anything like that. I had a big old chalkboard we'd draw things and, you know, more hands-on than anything. But it kind of grew to getting involved then with the department of Agriculture in the western Pennsylvania area. And then it went into West Virginia and I was doing some training in West Virginia for their association, their annual and semi-annual meetings. You know, making sure that the spray technicians knew the guidelines and chemical a, the chemicals and different things like that. So, it just kind of grew from word of mouth. And then one day John Yakob calls me and says, Hey you may be getting a call from someone at the G-C-S-A-A. Because I, at their LA our last meeting, I mentioned your name and that you would be really good to have on board with the GCSA as far as helping with sprayer, certification or sprayer, you know, training. that's when Alan Hayes then to get, did get in touch with me and he had started a guide on different calibrations for backpack, sprayers for rotary spreaders for, you know, you name it, anything that applied pesticides and so we worked and finished that. And then I pretty much had the eastern part of the US and he had the western part of the US. From Florida all the way up to, you know, Maine.

Trent Manning: 8:22

Oh wow.

Jim Nedin: 8:23

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 the industry, but they allowed me the extra time. I took all of my vacation time. I was just really getting passionate about it, and that's how I became, you know, affiliated or associated with the G-C-S-A-A way, way back when,

Trent Manning: 8:47

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 8:48

in I guess, 1982, somewhere in there.

Trent Manning: 8:51

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 a lot because I would really like to do some research on cutting units and behind center distance and some of those things, you know, on, on greens. And you know what, I don't know how you would do that though.'cause we gotta get a university or somebody involved probably.

Jim Nedin: 9:22

R Right. So I used to do a lot of work with Penn State University at Valentine Research Center back in the day. And they had a lot of fun with with chemicals, that we would use to see that efficacy, how the plant would take up the chemicals and so on. And we used black light and different things like that to do photographing these kind of things and video slow high speed video. And so just looking at those kind of things. But we also did a lot with with cutting 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 turf club whenever I lived in the, in closer to that area, I guess you could say. I would go up a couple times a year and present as a turf club and they would have their outings as well as far as their field days. And you know, I'd be a part of that and looking at the quality of cut and so on and so forth. But as you mentioned about behind center distance and, you know, different looking at different adjustments and so on and so forth, that is critical. and it does have some. Relationship to the types of grass, right? If we were to look at warm season grasses, for instance, we wouldn't be so aggressive with warm season grasses. And if you've ever seen any of the presentations by Toro or by me independently or through Toro we discovered early on whenever we were working with Disney and I don't know if Toro still is working with Disney but I spent a lot of time down at Disney.'cause at that time they had five golf courses and they had the y world of sports and the y world of sports. Al Bermuda four 19 on their fields. And they just had common Bermuda in, in the rough areas, which was just nasty

Trent Manning: 11:20

Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 11:21

it's not very refined, but nonetheless and I think I mentioned to you, I was called a DM Yankee for a few years because I'm a northern Nebraska guy, and I go down there and I see all this weed, right? It looks like just little Christmas trees growing in the grass. But so as I say, that's what I was referred to for a few years until I really got my, the handle on warm season But with warm season grasses, we discovered with a whole toro research team down at the Y world of sports that, that you cannot. You know, adjust a mower in warm season grasses to the likeness of cool season grasses. It'll be disastrous for the most part because it doesn't tolerate a whole lot of lift. it's pretty much zero to about four degrees behind the center line. Where warm season grasses, you can go, you can get pretty dramatic with it, but usually there's usually somewhere around six degrees. So anywhere from zero to six degrees, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. You can go up to eight probably as the absolute mat maximum, before it really starts to do some nasty things into the turf. And what I mean by that is the cutting unit, the reel itself goes so deep into the profile because the bed knife is eight degrees behind the bottom of the reel. So if you wanna, just a quick way to, to look at this in math, in a five inch diameter reel, for instance. A quarter inch equals six degrees. So if you were a dead zero with the bed knife, that it was exactly at the bottom of the reel, and if you moved it back a quarter of an inch, that would be six degrees. So, and then you can multiply or divide or however you want. You know, three degrees would be an eighth of an inch, that kind of

Trent Manning: 13:09

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 roughly three eighths of an inch. And so what happens is the real itself before it gets to the cut point is so penetrating so deeply into the uncut grass and it's lifting at a fairly significant angle. So there's two things that happen. One, the real dipping into that uncut 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 those grass blades. As it's cutting it's pulling those grass blades up. The opposite side of that is that it pulls the cutting unit down, and that's where we get scalping and gouging and so on and so forth. Unru this, right? So we try to get some lift to cut cleanly because we want, do, want to lift up on that plant or lift up on that tissue a little bit, but we don't want to cut it on such a bias that it really opens that wound up that it's not a, a square cut, so to speak. So if we cut on a bias, now we have this huge wounded area, and again, even if the real sharp and you have this huge wounded area that again, then the chemical can't work in the plant to heal and seal that plant, right? The hydrogen

Trent Manning: 14:32

Yeah. yeah. No,

Jim Nedin: 14:33

So we want to try to keep things as straight and as, as square as possible whenever we're cutting. And so the steeper the angle, the more difficult it becomes for after cutt appearance and also for the health of the plant. And also the gouging and so on and so forth. It causes a cutting unit to become very unruly in the turf profile. And that has nothing to say about how much thatch or what that cutting unit's setting on. Right?

Trent Manning: 15:05

Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 15:05

You take a seven inch diameter, it typically weighs around 140 to 150 pounds, and it's sitting on, you know, three to maybe three and a half inch rollers. There's not a whole lot of that roller that's really supporting that turf profile because it, if you look at a, anything that's circular like a roller. maximum point of penetration or weight is right on a laser line at the bottom of that roller. Every, all the other weight is is becoming less and less as that roller turns its way out of the turf, right? So the, so it is the profile of that roller in itself, the cutting is sitting much deeper than it was whenever you measured it on your workbench with your height

Trent Manning: 15:49

Right. Yeah. Yeah,

Jim Nedin: 15:51

and so that's just the reality of it. I prefer in warm season grass is a seven inch diameter reel. That's, I'm just biased to that. There are a couple reasons. One, because warm seeds and grass tends to, really thatch tends to propagate you know, pretty quickly. So with the heavier mowers, like old gang mowers we used to use that weighed 250 pounds, they really hold on thatch layer. They really force that cutting unit to work into some word stable in the turf profile. So with the lighter weight cutting units, yes, they're, how can I say they're less expensive on your budget whenever you purchase them and so forth. But now you've got more to deal with that thatch layer allowed to grow rather than to hold that thatch layer down. So the seven inch diameter real weighs more, but it also has a benefit of being seven inches in diameter, higher torque, but it reaches out further, so it reaches out further into the uncut grass. To start to play and harvest that grass. And what I mean by harvest is a process. It's from the point where the real blade actually touches that uncut grass to the point where it's actually cut. That's what I refer to as harvesting. So it's playing in the turf, standing that turf up is the best that it can, and then it's finally cutting it. So with a five inch diameter rail, you're kind of compromised because a radius is, sharper, right? It's less of a radius, so it reaches out less. So, having said that, whenever you're working in really dense profile, you want as much of that. You want that real to work as hard as it can in front of the cut, to, help stand up that grass and pull it into play, and then finally cut it. So there's a lot that goes on there. And plus again, the extra weight of that cutting unit, but going to where the, the cutting edge is. And I refer to the cutting edge rather than refer to, you know, where, what the angle of the bottom of the bed knife is in many cases that, that those two don't add up. Now in, in Toro's case with the DPA cutting units designed by Jerry Goman as you had

Trent Manning: 18:16

Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Jim Nedin: 18:17

I think last September

Trent Manning: 18:18

Uhhuh.

Jim Nedin: 18:18

did. And

Trent Manning: 18:20

Good

Jim Nedin: 18:20

he mentioned, what's that?

Trent Manning: 18:22

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 a research engineer. And he as he mentioned to you, I think it was between a brand new reel and wanted his down to its limit, which is a five inch drill down to four and a half that. A cutting edge basically will maybe move back five, maybe 10 thousands. because the way it was designed that, that bed bar, if you will, if you can imagine as the real wears, that bed bar or bed knife itself actually moves a little bit forward because of the extended upper adjustments to where the fork is up where the double d nut goes through the

Trent Manning: 19:13

Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 19:13

black bolt, tighten it up with the spring and the nut having said that. So whenever the real wears, the bed knife moves slightly forward. However, you need to lower it down again. To get back to the height that you once are. So as you do that now, you chase that bed knife cutting edge back to exactly where it was. So you're constantly chasing it back and forth until pretty much down the limit. Then after that, I mean, everything has its limit, right? So to speak, as far as things really go crazy then. But from start to finish or from a new reel to a limit on a DP, a cutting unit that, that bed knife cutting edge if you're adjusting to the maintaining the height of cut throughout the life of that reel, that cutting edge of that where the reel meets the bed night basically doesn't move back any more than five. I think it's five in the in the engineering It's five. I would say maybe 10 at very most, which is nothing. And here's why. Here's why. It's nothing. People get all bent outta shape about looking at a bed knife and saying, okay, is it absolutely true to the pivot point of that bed bar? Right? And you know, SIP does a really good job of focusing in on that. And whenever I was younger, I used SIP products, good products. However, if you look at that and back in the day, I always say that because I'm an old guy. But back in the day, you know, it was pretty much center punching and drilling and, you know, there were some things that we used automated wise, but. To have the bed knife holes in a bed bar, always in the exact spot where they needed to be. And then forging the bed knives and having those holes in the exact spot that where they needed to be. Now you're chasing all that out to a cutting edge, right? And now you grind an edge on a bed knife. So you have this multiplying effect of error

Trent Manning: 21:15

Right, right.

Jim Nedin: 21:15

that in today's world, basically we look at a bed knife whenever it's installed 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 the center hole of the bed knife 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 all together, basically should be within 10 thousandths. So you could be out up to 10 thousandths. Alright? So,

Trent Manning: 21:59

Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 21:59

alright, one degree is 43 thousandths

Trent Manning: 22:06

Yes.

Jim Nedin: 22:06

In a five inch diameter oil, one degree is 43,000. So if you're at five or 10 thousandths, whenever you install your bed bar, bed knife assembly on your Foley grinder, whenever it's brand new and you're cleaning it up, I don't know I don't know how in the real reality, you're never going to see that. Never in a million years.

Trent Manning: 22:37

Yeah, I,

Jim Nedin: 22:38

there are some that, that don't meet that spec. I've been contacted by some really good equipment managers that say, Hey, I, I have this on my 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. That's a flaw That is not standard.

Trent Manning: 23:01

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,

Trent Manning: 23:14

yeah. I mean, I think

Jim Nedin: 23:15

all the manufacturers kind of follow suit with the way they design things today that you know, we're really splitting hairs at five thousands or 10 thousands. You know, of an inch, one way or the other. But whenever we get, you know, I would say 15 or 20 wait a minute. That, that, that's not meeting a specification that we're looking for,

Trent Manning: 23:40

yeah. No, I agree. And so I ground a QA five bed bar the other day on my Foley bed knife grinder. And the reason I ground the bed bar is it had, hump basically in the middle of it. That was 30 thousandths, and that was caused by, it struck a sprinkler head. And after that happened, it bent that much. And I've had quite a few of these bed bars bend over the years, over the last, whatever, 10 years. And I was just replacing them because they were 150 bucks, but now they're over 400, you know, and it's just, it's getting too pricey to replace. So,

Jim Nedin: 24:30

I don't know where that's gonna end. If it, I'd probably not.

Trent Manning: 24:34

I don't think, I don't see

Jim Nedin: 24:36

the new norm, right? The new norm,

Trent Manning: 24:38

Yeah, it

Jim Nedin: 24:39

yeah. So, so having said that, you know, I feel pretty confident with the fully bed knife grinder, using the flags, that kind of thing. and, you know, even express at all using the flags. Only it's a little more dicey with that as far as moving the pivots where, you know, where you tie into the bed bar pivots, that kind of thing. So it's all kind of moving. It's a moving target. But having said that what I don't struggle with, but my comment is if you're regrinding a bed knife on any bed knife grinder that uses flags, you're going by the front edge of that bed knife that maybe worn at a different angle. So I cannot with a high level of confidence say that's gonna come out Correct. You know what I'm Yeah. Unless you use, unless you found the center line of the ben I screw line of the pivots, like S-P-S-S-I-P does.

Trent Manning: 25:46

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, of course, then at that point. But nonetheless you know, but when we're talking all new and the spec is correct I'd say it's a non-starter. It's not worth having that discussion.

Trent Manning: 26:07

Yeah, and I mean, I agree with that. And so I did a video last year and I pur purposely ground. The front face of the bed knife at a 16th taper from one end to another. So one end was 60 thousandths, you know, shorter than the other end. And we put it, it was a new reel actually it was a brand new flex, 2120 or what, whatever the new flex mower number is. And we put this bed bar and bed knife in there and we went and mowed side by side, another new mower, and we could not see the difference. And I mean, we were looking really hard and we knew where the bad mower was, where the good mower was, and you can't tell a difference. And that's a 16th of an inch. And I think it would be hard to accidentally grind one a 16th of an inch. You know, if you just, like you're

Jim Nedin: 27:08

right. You'd have to,

Trent Manning: 27:09

or whatever.

Jim Nedin: 27:10

you'd have to be on something,

Trent Manning: 27:12

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.

Trent Manning: 27:19

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 the footer being as square as you can possibly get it. Foundation walls, framing all that because you don't wanna get up to putting the roof on and the shingles and having the first row of shingles with a half a shingle at the bottom, and you get up to the top and it's You know, only two inches of shingle.'cause now you can really see it. So I always try to, you know, we call that stacking error. You know, when you're building a lot of components and each one has a tolerance of, let's say two to three thousands, but you're stacking five or six of them together, and now all of a sudden it's like the leaning tower pizza and that wasn't what, you know, you wanted as a result. So, you know, there's so many things that there's, That can influence. So if you add all those little minor errors up or in discrepancies up, then you've got a bad product or a bad after cut appearance, and that's where you have to kind of unwind those, right? One thing at a time. And that's why I say don't throw four or five things that you think are going to fix it like

Trent Manning: 28:30

Oh

Jim Nedin: 28:30

at one time, because it might be worse, it might be better, but the next time you have that situation you don't know which one really dramatically made it better, and all the other ones were just along for the ride, or if it got a lot worse, what caused it to be become worse, you know? So the USGA, came out with a couple years ago and said, if you make a change to like a cutting unit or a procedure process and mainly it was speaking to, to cutting turf that if you make a change that you should mow up to five times before really determining whether it made it better or did nothing or made it worse. It's funny that they came out of that because for probably the last 40 years, I've been saying three times, so I'll still stick with my three times but they said five, you know, three to, I always say three to five times. Try it three Times. Now if it, if you really start scalping and things got

Trent Manning: 29:32

Well, right?

Jim Nedin: 29:33

To stop, you know, don't continue.

Trent Manning: 29:35

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, I know that you wanted to get onto some other subjects and I'm happy to do that whenever you would like to do

Trent Manning: 29:50

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

Jim Nedin: 29:54

your audience might be burned out from me talking

Trent Manning: 29:57

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

Jim Nedin: 30:08

to hear. I,

Trent Manning: 30:08

they really love getting into the weeds on this

Jim Nedin: 30:11

yeah. Yep.

Trent Manning: 30:14

and I do too. But we will go on to 6 48. What's some of the things you've seen over the years? The biggest problems? because yeah, and when I say problem 6 48 is hands down the best air fire ever made, and I don't think anybody would, you know, argue that. But it has had some issues here and there.

Jim Nedin: 30:40

No question.

Trent Manning: 30:41

yeah. So, yeah

Jim Nedin: 30:42

it's a piece of equipment that's, again, designed to try to be everything to everyone, right?

Trent Manning: 30:49

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, was designed to air verify wide spaces, closest, closer spaces, different depths, all these things. And to be able to do it flawlessly is pretty difficult, no question.

Trent Manning: 31:10

Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 31:11

because the. The angle of the head, like people would always, when we first came out with that unit back in 2004, and that was a project from probably about 2000. So it was around four years in the making. It really started to get more aggressive with it the last two years, like, 2002 to 2004 started to get out there, prototyping, that kind of thing. But in 2004 it was released and so it was definitely, you know, a game changer because number one, it was twice as wide as the conventional 24 inch aerator,

Trent Manning: 31:50

okay.

Jim Nedin: 31:50

right? Like the GA 24, the Ryan ga 24 24 inches, and the wheels were inside of the path. than the wheels being outside of the path, because in your second pass, your wheels ran over what you just verified, compressed the holes and made a bunch of dooo on

Trent Manning: 32:10

Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 32:11

So, being twice as wide and the wheels inside of that path and the versatility of the unit, being able to go from shallow to deep and from one and a half inch spacing to three inch spacing, then to have a transport speed as well was pretty phenomenal. So, you know, there from that point there was very little change made until we got into 2006, 2007. And what we started to see, or what we had at different times was the turf guards did not have enough pressure on the turf guards at in certain situations. The units built like a six cylinder engine, so the outer stompers go up and down together. The mid stompers go up and down together, and the center two stompers go up and down together. Three and four go up and down together. So if you had a four time head on there, three quarter inch mount, that's eight times going into the ground and coming out at the same time. Now a time when it goes into the ground and then proceeds to come out of the ground, there's a tremendous amount of suction that's created. And because we chose this six cylinder. Configuration we had the turf crowning in the center of that four foot, aeration, swat, and crowning is not good because it shears the roots, right? It lifts. So if you would walk across that first time ever using that air fire at a deep depth and you had crowding, it felt like, wow, this is like, I'm walking on my mattress in the middle of this. Well, that's not a good thing. So I mean, we came out with a 10 time head, many time head, which meant that there were 20 times going into the ground and coming out of the ground at the same time. And we had three eights, side eject times that you can install in that. So that's a massive amount of suction. So, in 2006, we came up with a different hinge. And a different on the stand standing and looking over the machine from front to back. On the left hand tuber frame that goes to the head. We mounted a solid three quarter inch bar. Maybe it was one inch bar, I can't remember, with some slots in it or grooves in it. And that was to attach ex an extra set of springs. And so the new hinge had the ability to attach these springs to the hinge for the center and for the wings, or the left and right. To make them twice as strong. Okay. So that was great. But the problem became then that we made the down pressure stronger. However, we're using plastic or. Some form of plastic. I can't remember exactly what it was, or is, but, so the plastic yielded, the plastic would bend instead of posing the force down to the turf, so that, that's good and not good, right? And it's a good idea, but it didn't go as far as we could. So what we came up with then is what we called stiffeners. And the stiffeners are little actually they're metal. It's a it has a metal back to it and it has fingers that stick out. And each of the fingers lay on top of the plastic turf guard and you shove those right in. And so that it holds down on the plastic turf guard and stiffens the plastic turf guard to make those springs do what they were intended to do, to hold down the turf. So a lot of times what I'll find is the people that have a 2006 or newer machine, they run into that problem and they'll take it upon themselves to buy two extra springs and I'll get a phone call and they'll say, I put these two extra springs on. Did virtually nothing. I said, well, did you get the stiffeners? They don't know what I'm talking about.

Trent Manning: 36:28

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

Jim Nedin: 36:31

stiffeners. If you look in your whatever Procore book that you have it probably under attachments or whatever, you'll see the Turf Guard Stiffeners and you have to buy the correct turf guard stiffener set for the correct turf guard, whether it's a three hole, four hole, you know, five hole, whatever it is to match those up. So if you're going with double springs, then you want the Turf guard stiffeners to add to that additional set of springs that you're going to apply so that it does 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 time out. I mean, we did we were band putting a bandaid on, on, you know, we had a great air fire that you know, was pulling a lot of cores, but we didn't, we didn'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. Well, how's the root system gonna grow if I never go deep? You know, that So we're kind of caught in this, you know, circular firing squad. But so that that's the way you want to complete that thought is get the turf guard, stiffeners and that's what they're called. And there's a number, part number for each one. So for you would need four of each, whatever

Trent Manning: 38:00

yeah. For whichever

Jim Nedin: 38:01

And that will complete that thought. But prior to 2006, then we came out with a kit. And the kit was, you could change that hinge out. And there was a bracket that we designed to, to add those extra springs to the frame and so forth. But the kit was over a thousand dollars. So it, it was like, oh. So people were like, eh, I don't think I'm gonna do that. So, but you know, I don't see too many 2004, 2005 units. Every once in a while I'll see you'cause they kind of live forever. But you know, it's been a very good unit. What we've gotten into a lot is over the years is what we call turf tufting.

Trent Manning: 38:43

Yep.

Jim Nedin: 38:44

And so it, oddly enough, whenever there, there was a golf course south of where I live right now, and they have seven of these machines

Trent Manning: 38:56

Oh

Jim Nedin: 38:56

They get machines. They get machines every whatever, three or four years on a lease or whatever. And it would be, it would never fail when they'd get these new machines. I would get a phone call and say, these things are tough and like crazy, all right? I go down and so they'd be on a practice area showing me, and I'd reach beside the machine. They'd have it in a, and I'd reach beside the machine and I yank it into D while it's operating. All of a sudden, bingo problem went away oh my God, what'd you do? I said, well, first of all. You can't use a long time to go short into the turf. If you're going to go a small, a low minimal depth into the turf, you need to use a short time. If you're going to go deep, you use a long time,

Trent Manning: 39:53

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 39:53

you can't buy a long time and hope you'll get three years life out of it as it wears, you'll just go down another letter. That's not the way it's gonna work for you. And just like I said, well, here's the deal. The old Ryan Aerator and the old Greens Toro Greens aerator, when they dropped straight down. dropped, you know, there was very little axle motion there as far as from the axis with a 6 48. If you look across the center line of the 6 48 head. The 6 48 head rotates off of that center link. So when the head comes up, it's actually on an angle

Trent Manning: 40:35

Nope. Yep.

Jim Nedin: 40:35

when it drops, it rotates. So if you're using a long time and you're in a, and you only want to go down at an inch, that aerators aerating on an angle. So when the time comes out of the ground, it's kicking and it tufts, it'll actually cause some pretty bad after verification marks. So by me taking and just grabbing that lever and pulling it down into D or E or F for whatever, now I've lowered the head to a straighter angle vertical, and now it's aerating as you would expect it to. And so, so that's those things that I run into some still today, I'll get phone calls, you know. And I'll say, well, what are you trying to achieve? Well, we only go, only want to kind of break the surface, you know, only want to go down an inch or so. Well, what kind of times are you using? Well, we're using these five and a half inch long times. You can if you want, but you're gonna have a rotor tilling effect, you know, so, those are some of the things that we got into. Now you, you can make some adjustments to the upper links. I don't know if you notice on the, on a 6 48 there are what we call upper links. It looks like term, you know, tie rods and there's we're 17 and three quarters of an inch center to center. So if you would imagine a greaser in a ball joint at the end of its high rod, if you measured across the center of that ball joint, it's about 17 and three quarters of an inch. And that's from the factory. You can extend those out a little bit, which then takes the head. It's tapered like this. So now you're, because it's rolling in the center line. You're gonna push it out a little bit to kind of straighten it. So whenever you're noting as deep, the head will straighten, right? So you can kind of cheat, but if now you go too deep, now the head's gonna be like this, right? And so now it's gonna start to kick or tough towards the operator. So I always ask customers at the depth that you're aerating, how is it tufting? Is it tufting away from the operator? Is it tufting towards the operator? So that's a good indication that the head is either like, you know, too close to the operator on an angle, so it's tufting to the operator, or not enough of an angle as it's, you know, going down, or it's gone down into the turf. So you can adjust those upper links, but there is a limit to those upper links. And so the limit is two and a half terms. It's a lefthand thread and right handed thread. So if you'd envision, you're actually going five, five terms if you were going by one, right? So it's coming out and going in pretty quickly. But since we're on that center link, if we're extending the upper links by two and a half terms, we're really pushing out on this, right? So we're pushing out on this to straighten that. The head, there's two things that happen. If I push out too far on that, I make the belt extremely tight on the secondary belt that goes up to the head can have, you know, prematurely have bearings, wear those kind of things. But that's not the main thing that happens. If I go more than two and a half, turns out on standing again, operator position. Looking back over the machine on the right hand side is the on the turf guard hinge point is the the depth rod that goes up to where A through H is, right? Well, if you look at that bracket, it's pretty close to that tire. If you go more than two and a half turns, that brings the head in to where that brace that's on it rubs the tire.

Trent Manning: 44:27

Ah, okay.

Jim Nedin: 44:28

How do I know

Trent Manning: 44:29

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

Trent Manning: 44:36

Oh, wow.

Jim Nedin: 44:37

so two and a half. Turns out now two and a half turns in. Is what we call the other extreme. I want to go two and a half turns in. What will happen is if you go further than that, even though there's a secondary adjustment on the belt to make that belt tighter, the belt will become a bit too loose and it will start to skip a beat under heavy load conditions in harder turf. So now it throws it out of time and it'll rototill, it'll verify if Rototill verify. So you want to pay close attention to that. Now, what you will find on those upper links is that when everything's brand new, everything is wonderful, right? Things work as advertised. So, but what you want to pay attention to is on those upper links, that ball joint, it's at the end is is pressed on there in a plastic, there's like a plastic liner. If you take your big crescent wrench or whatever and crack the nut loose if you're, if for whatever reason that starts to turn that ball joint, it'll pop that ball joint off the ball, you're done not getting it back on.

Trent Manning: 45:51

yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 45:52

So that ball joint itself is three quarters of an inch thick. So if you take a three quarter inch wrench or even a crescent wrench to hold that ball joint while you're cracking that nut loose, that's both the right hand thread and left hand thread. Now, what you might get into is you can't turn the rod now because silicon and dust, and even though they're threads, they still get in there, is that I always take a hammer. And kind of buck up against the tube in a lighter hammer and tap on the threaded area to kind of shake that loose. And typically you can get it to turn then, so you'll need, you'll either turn it with a you know, a vice grips or something to that effect to, to turn that. But you can only go about one turn at a time. So I mark the tube and just don't let anybody kind of be talking to you sideways while you're doing this. But you can't go too all two and a half turns on one side.'cause now you're twisting the head and it won't let you do that. The rod, those tie rods will get extremely tight, whether it's left side or right side. But whatever you do, make sure that you hold the ball joint from turning because I've had that bad experience where, you know, the the ball joint pops off. Now you're pretty much dead in the water until you get another one.

Trent Manning: 47:09

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 was first released and we were out doing a lot of testing, a lot of research with the units and prototyping too. But when it really hits the ground is when you start to learn more things because you now you have more product out there,

Trent Manning: 47:27

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 do their own thing with them as well. But there's there's been a lot of different things that run into over the years with six 40 eights. For instance, I've, I was at a golf course oh, a number of years ago, and oddly enough, the the superintendent says to me, this thing is rota tilling. I mean, literally rota tilling whenever we drop it in the ground. Then whenever we take it out of the ground at the other, on the other end, it rota tills for about a foot. I mean it, he said it doesn't to it Rota. Tills. And so I'm listening to him and we, we go down to a green and he 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's cleaned up. After that, it was perfect to cross the green and then on, on lift, same thing. And I'm looking at that and I said, just do it one more time. Well do it one more time. And I said, well, yeah

Trent Manning: 48:46

Right?

Jim Nedin: 48:47

and so I, I kind of figured out what was going on. So I walked over to the machine and I choked the engine. I literally a full engine. RPM, I just ran it until I heard a bellow, you know, a change in the tone.

Trent Manning: 49:05

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 is the engine's running lean. So whenever you're putting the load on one of the head firing up and the hydraulics activating this head, the engine takes a droop, throws it out of time until it can recoup. And on the other end, when you hit hydraulic lift, the hydraulics loads it up. So what we wound up doing, he said, well, I chain. He said I'm ahead of you here. I put a carburetor kit in it. I already changed the filter in the you know, the sediment bowl filter. I said, I understand. Did you clean the tank out? He said, what are you talking about? I said, let's go back up to the shop. So we went up back up to the shop and we took and threw a bunch of nuts and bolts in the tank and put kerosene, well drained it, it was draining, kind of slow, put kerosene in the tank and cleaned it out three or four times, blew it out, put it back together, and it was fine after that. But what I learned is over the years is even though you're, you have a cap on that, and what we found is that the sediment from silt and sand and dust, and that gets in that tank and starts to lower the head pressure, we call head pressure, the weight of the fuel, even though there's a fuel pump, but it's still starving. So, it was one quick fix. So usually when I hear somebody say that it's tufting or tufting badly you know, I tell'em don't get too creative with this. Go out and choke it just until you 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 all kinds of things

Trent Manning: 50:49

Oh

Jim Nedin: 50:50

make things happen, you know?

Trent Manning: 50:51

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

Jim Nedin: 51:08

yes. Right, right. So, there's a standard setting. There's a standard setting, and that's the way the unit comes. And then there's what we call stiffening the rotor link. And stiffening the rotor link. Kind of what it does it basically does that because it, it throws the rotor link on its little bit of an angle, so it's not adjacent to, we have that dog bone. If you notice that dog bone, it goes from the connecting, connecting rod to the stomper arm, right? And so it's a dog bone and there's bearings on both ends. And if you look at the way that Rota link is attached it's pretty much in, in line with that. And and that's standard position. Whenever we stiffen the rota link we drop the rotor link out of its position by those two half inch, well, three quarter inch knot on half inch, all thread. Drop that out and we'll take the half the first half inch spacer out and then reinstall that rotor link. So now the rota link's on a slight angle. So it's not as adjacent, so it's more difficult for that rotor link to move. And so basically, if you would look at it like this as well, is if we take a look at that rotor link and we have this perfect eight inch circle, that the rotor link is allowing that air fire to aerate. And if we move this end up that this part is rotating, is attached to it, turns it into more like an egg on its end. That's pretty dramatic. But it, so it makes it more of a vertical load going directly into the ground instead of a sweeping action. So whenever your needle timing typically so take, it'll take me into something else here in a second,

Trent Manning: 52:51

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Jim Nedin: 53:35

So, so whenever you stiffen the rotor link, you're raising up the backside of that rotor link where the. Where the rotor link actually is, that little shock absorber. So it's making it more difficult to sway because it's raised up. In addition to that, if you notice anyone that has a 6 48 notice, there's little rubber bumpers on that rotor link as well. Under the normal or standard position, those rubber bumpers are actually indexing or coming in contact with a half inch aluminum spacer that is underneath the deck. So if you take the half inch spacer off the rotor link where each of those studs are, and I usually put'em up top. Instead of putting'em in your toolbox, just put'em up top, put the nut back on so you know that that it's been stiffened. You need to take in those long slots at those half inch headed. Cap screws are actually five 16, but half inch headed cap screws and shove those aluminum blocks that are underneath there. So spacers far forward to the operator. And the reason for that is I just raised the rotor link by a half inch. Those rubber little dampers that, that come in contact with that spacer block underneath there will now jam. So if you want to see a, you want to use a 6 48 as a rototiller, leave those spacers back to where they are at for the standard position because the rotor link cannot rotate Those rubber are hitting. So you wanna slide those forward because we just raised this up. Now those rubber dampers will be able to hit the bottom of the deck. So you gotta remember that. So I run into that often. And it shows you, well, it tells you in the book, but there's a whole lot of information that's given you at one time, right? So, but if you're gonna go to this stiffening the rotor link, you need to slide those half in spacers ahead. And if you notice where those bolts are five 16 bolts with a half inch flange heads on them, there's a slot, the slot within its standard position, those the bolt goes all the way to the back. And whenever it's a stiffened position, the bolts go all the way to the front.

Trent Manning: 55:54

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 55:55

and what I like to do is do half the machine, I'll do half the machine stiffen, leave the other half, you know, standard and go airy and see what happens. And if it says, wow, it's turned out a lot better, then I notice change of'em all. But oddly enough, what I've found. In, well, what is it? 2000? 2002. 2000. So 2025. So it's, you know, 20 some years later. Oddly enough, what I find is most people when they stiffen the rotor link, they just leave it that way.

Trent Manning: 56:30

Oh, okay.

Jim Nedin: 56:31

Well, here's why. Now they take me on to what bubbled up in my brain when we were talking about stiffening and rotary. When we look at an air, a tide going into the ground, right? What is holding that tide from moving to give you a perfect to is the earth. So if I have a very small diameter, like a needle time, right? And the machine's moving forward, the time went into ground, the machine's moving forward, which is the reason the rotor links there to allow the machine to move forward while that time is still in the ground and kind of working its way through. So a bigger th a half inch th three quarter inch. Th you typically won't see an issue with that because the thine is large enough in, its in its diameter to hold itself in the turf without any movement. But whenever you get down to like a solid 200000th time, which is one of my favorite times, they're, you know, five and a half, six inches and they're solid 200 thousandths in diameter, or a needle time eight millimeter, which is about 200,000. So, you know, they're about five millimeter. Yeah, they're a little small. I don't know that they do a tremendous amount of good other than giving it a little bit of oxygen for a small amount of time before everything closes back up, but none nonetheless, it's, you know, ev everybody has their own choice. But so that's the reason you wanna stiffen a rotor link with a needle ty or a small tie because you want to shorten, you know, because of that drag in between the tiny going in and coming out, you want more of a vertical if you're in hard conditions, like my backyard here is probably pretty much shale and granite, we go down about two inches, right? So, so I I borrowed a, an eight 6 48 when we first moved here, 13, 12, 13 years ago. And I put solid times on it, five, eight solid times. And before I even took it outta the garage, I stiffened the Rotax and that thing did some dancing. I want to tell you yes, some real dancing in my backyard on the hillside. Now I did discover that six 40 eights are actually terrible on the hillside going along the hillside they will bounce. And want to, you know, go vertical, horizontal, or vertical. I have my grade in the frontier. I had a vent track here two years ago using the the elevator and it's over 30 degrees. I was scared to death that thing was gonna flip over or on top of me. And that bless you. That 6 48 climbed right up that over 30 degree slope.

Trent Manning: 59:25

Oh, wow.

Jim Nedin: 59:26

I had put a little pressure on the front tire, of course but it climbed right up there. I was shocked.'Cause I never One on that steep of a slope before. And since I was borrowing it from a distributor I didn't wanna have to need to buy one

Trent Manning: 59:41

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 things with the 6 48 that it's the simplest machine in the world for an operator to operate, but there's a lot of things going on. You know, there's basically three electrical modes that we talk about. And there's a lot of symmetry as well. So there's, there, there are six relays. They're all identically the same. there are six magnetic switches. Sensor switches are all identically the same two ball switches, which are on the automatic 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 of parts if you're into the electronic or electrical side of the world, you know. But we use the diodes in certain ways. We use them we call latching. So in other words, whenever you push the button to lower the head and push the button down it's a latching relay, through, through the grounding that continues through that relay. And what that does, it's kind of like your it's it's kind of like you're on your car where you have your you know, you, your, where you go on a distance and you just go ahead and put it in, you know, auto speed or whatever. And so until you tell it, until you touch the brake on the car, right? And then it,

Trent Manning: 1:01:03

Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:01:03

it, it stops. But the same thing with the 6 48. Until you leave, go of that lift bale or tell it to come up, it's gonna continue to air. So, we use the relays in a lot of different ways with that unit. And the hydraulic system is pretty unique as well. So with the 6 48, if you ever looked on the manifold, there are three solenoids there's, if you look at the wiring diagram or all them remarked, it'll have SVR for. Solenoid Rays, it'll have SVL for solenoid lower, it'll have SVQ and that stands for quick. So the way the 6 48 operates is whenever you're lowering the head, it uses two paths of oil to allow that 650 pound head to push the oil out of this cylinder. So it drops pretty quickly. When you go to raise, it activates SVR and SVQ to give you two paths of oil to raise the head quickly. However, when it's in ground following and it's following the left and right turf guard it shuts off SVQ so that now we only have half the oil flow when the head goes into a low spot. It says to lower the head or to raise the head. That's gonna do it nice and gracefully now because we cut half of the oil flow off, so in ground following s VQs not used, which takes me to another part of the, if you experience at the beginning or at the end of a pass or maybe both tufting, pretty good tufting and you try it with the engine thing as far as choking the engine a little bit, doesn't fix it. What I always tell people will do, next thing you want to do is reach on and just pop off the SVQ connector on that solenoid, okay? Because the head may be dropping faster than it needs to, which is kind of thrown it out. Its time and sequence with the speed that the machine's traveling, the rotation of the head. All those things have to work pretty well together. So what we're doing is we're slowing down the drop speed of that, and then at the opposite end, we're slowing the lift speed of that. So you need a about foot and a half or better. You can operate that way the rest of it's life it doesn't know. It doesn't care, okay. It's just not gonna drop faster or raise faster. You can operate it the rest of its leg. However, what that is saying is if everything cleans up, it's telling you that the head is dropping and raising too quickly. Ah, okay. So Toro makes an orifice that goes in the, on the monoblock or what I call OID block, where the hose comes out. If you take that fitting out, there is, there are three eight threads in there and they make a an Allen set screw that has a a 16 t drill hole in it. You run that in, don't run it in hard, just run it in until she stops. No pressure on it whatsoever. The oil's not gonna go anywhere and run that fitting back in. Now what it doesn't slow it down as much as disconnecting the SVQ, but it slows it down probably 50% of that. And it typically will cure that. So that's typically what I use as a guide to say, ah, we need an orifice in that to slow the drop and to slow the lift when the SVQ is connected.

Trent Manning: 1:04:43

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

Jim Nedin: 1:04:49

that's an option. That is

Trent Manning: 1:04:50

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

Jim Nedin: 1:05:03

Right. So yeah, early on we had an issue with number three. Number three is the clutch activation switch. And so we came up with a bracket that went on the tubular frame and a different bracket to kind of, allow that switch to activate a little quicker so that so that the, it was at full rotation by the time it got into the turf because it was kind of marginal that the head was maybe running not at full RPM when it got into the turf. And having said that then the thing would be under stress and it would be out of time until it cleaned itself up. So early on we came up with a little kit and there was a bulletin on that and so on and so forth. So that, that was early on. And then. I would say in probably in the last three, five, maybe four or five years, they came up with number four switch, which is the target switch for for activating the turf guard as far as automatic ground following the depth. So what would happen is if you lowered the head down to where it was in a funky letter that wasn't clearly H or clearly A, somewhere in the middle, the head would drop and start to bounce as it was going over the chart.'cause it's saying, I'm not quite sure where to go here. So basically we came out with a different bracket and a way to adjust that switch to either in. You know, holes, A, the whole position A or whole position B, if in fact you're gonna use it from A through, I don't know, C let's say, and then from D to HI may have the lettering a little wrong, but to clearly help that switch understand the depth at which you're going to use it. And that's been very helpful because we started to get, some people are really trying to fine tune 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 is when the head's all the way up, number one, solenoid or number one switch then recognizes it's all the way up. And the solenoids are shut off. There's no power to the solenoid, so the heads are up because there's a ball check ball in the system that holds the head up. Whenever you're going to aerify, if you've ever noticed and take a very close look you hit the switch to lower the head and it drops ever so slightly and whenever it drops ever so slightly, number one saying, I'm okay with dropping. And now it ignites Number two. Number two turns on the solenoid valves. So whatever you're telling it to do through the rocker switch lower, it's activating those correct solenoid valves. Now, as it drops a little bit lower, it now activates the clutch'cause the head's still not in the ground, but we went full rotation of the head and then whenever it gets down to where the ground following starts to come into play, number four is now activated. And so that, that's how that all operates. So if you should fall off of the lift bale, that all reverses, right? I always have told people in my training and that the machine is not happy until the head is home. 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 down through our different you know, things that we apply, electronically or electrically to the solenoids and so on and so 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 real fast. And that's through, if you notice on the head, there are two long springs on the head and up at the top where those springs are fastened through the little lengths. The bracket goes back to the frame and at the, at, on each of those brackets that hold the spring, there's a half inch hole, square hole in there. And that bracket is designed to put a breaker bar in there. And what you would do is you take the back bolt nut off, apply pressure, and then take the bolt out and push back on that. So you're gonna raise and stretch the spring even further. And then put the bolt in the lower hole. When you do that on each side, then it makes that headway 770 pounds. cause you're stretching that, remember, it's dead weight, it's pushing the oil out of that cylinder. It's a single acting cylinder. There's no not two orifices in that cylinder. So having said that, we really overbuilt this machine. Having said that. Let's say you're in some hard pan and it wasn't aerating, the head was bouncing and now you start to aerate and you're in some hard pan tees that maybe have never been AED in their life, that kind of thing, and the whole machine starts bouncing. If you would take a look at the tube that goes across the machine where the wheel motors are installed, the rear wheel motors are installed. If you looked at that tube, you would see that there are two right angle, arms weld to that vertically, and there are holes in that angle iron that's two installed, two 60 pound cast iron weights. So now you're reapplying the weight to the machine so that the whole machine doesn't bounce up and down. I haven't seen that very often done, but we really overbuilt this machine when we designed it. And 6 48 s has the same attributes.

Trent Manning: 1:11:03

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 1:11:04

That kind of thing. The s is the newer newer unit with a lot more electronic bells and whistles.

Trent Manning: 1:11:10

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

Jim Nedin: 1:11:19

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 then give it the same, because with the head, all we're doing is we're taking the weight off of the tractor and putting it on the head. Right. We're not making more weight, we're just transferring weight. But if we now need to apply weight to make the whole machine way heavier, we can add two 60 pound cast iron weights to the unit.

Trent Manning: 1:11:50

That's awesome. That's

Jim Nedin: 1:11:52

whenever we look at how the machine is to operate in a turf, we always want 12 pounds of air in the tires. Never anymore. Never any less. It is a series parallel system in the drive system. So series parallel means that front wheel is always pulling no matter what. That front wheel is always doing. The job it's taking on it, it's a higher capacity. Front motor dual double the capacity of the rear motors. So it's a higher capacity front motor. The oil's passing through the front motor and then being shared by the two rear wheel motors, which is parallel. So we have series parallel drive, so we always have at least two wheels driving the machine on a perfect, in a perfect situation where we have the same amount of resistant to all the wheels and tires, then all three are pulling. But it's kind of funny, if you would take that machine. And and jack up one side of that machine in the rear and only had two wheels, the front wheel and the left wheel, let's say on turf surface, and the right wheel up off of the turf surface, that rear right wheel that's up off the turf surface would not be spinning any faster than the left wheel because it's sharing the amount of flow.

Trent Manning: 1:13:19

Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:13:20

it's a very unique design. That's the way the 3,500 Grounds Master operates. And other, well, you're you the three wheel fairway mowers and so forth, that's the way they operate in the same fashion.

Trent Manning: 1:13:35

Okay. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:13:35

yeah, series Parallel System. Toro still is, I think pretty much is the only one that come up with that. May, maybe others have taken that technology these days, but I'm not saying they haven't. But

Trent Manning: 1:13:47

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

Jim Nedin: 1:13:53

So 55, 10 cross tracks is a little unique in that in the hydrostat itself there's a shuttle valve, what we call a shuttle valve that shuttles back and forth. If the front left wheel sees 500 pounds less resistance in turning, in other words, it's about to spin, it now sends that energy to the rear left wheel versa. So it's costly. Guess why it's called cross tracks. So it's constantly dancing back and forth, and that's why it's such a superior for lack of better term, four wheel drive unit. I've been on a golf course, it was called Ledge Rock. And it truly was ledge rock. I mean, they lost a lot of walking greens mores over cliffs on this ledge rock. But I was Alan Fitzgerald, who is, down on the Cape right now. and he was at Ledge Rock, and I became very good friends with Alan, and I would go out there to see him, you know, maybe once a year. And we stopped one time on this fairway, and I thought that I felt like I was on a rollercoaster. I thought I was gonna roll out of the golf cart over the hood. And we stopped there and it was so steep, honest to gosh, Trent. And I said to Alan, I said, how do you mow this? He says, with a 54 10. I said, get outta here. I said, I mean, I'm a Toro guy

Trent Manning: 1:15:19

yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:15:20

ain't no way I said it when it's damp or wet. He says, yeah, it climbs right up. But I said, do you have to mow it on a bias or sideways? He says, no, it's the only machine that we've ever had that could do that. You know, you don't put any kind of weight in the wheel or weight in tires. And he said, no, it is what it is. So, yeah, I was blown away that yeah. Alan Fitzgerald at LED Rock. It was

Trent Manning: 1:15:43

Okay. That is crazy.

Jim Nedin: 1:15:46

Yeah.

Trent Manning: 1:15:47

any, what, anything else on the 6 48?

Jim Nedin: 1:15:50

Oh, there's tons of stuff on a six foot

Trent Manning: 1:15:53

Well, so what I'm thinking here

Jim Nedin: 1:15:55

what would you like to know? What, so, so give me a how. Let's do this. Gimme a scenario, gimme a situation that maybe you've encountered or someone's encountered that you know of. And let's see if let's see if we can figure out a solution for it.

Trent Manning: 1:16:11

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

Jim Nedin: 1:16:17

Oh, no. Are we, oh, Lordy.

Trent Manning: 1:16:19

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

Jim Nedin: 1:16:24

spent half the time talking about something we weren't gonna talk

Trent Manning: 1:16:27

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

Jim Nedin: 1:16:33

Okay. No, that's

Trent Manning: 1:16:35

and

Jim Nedin: 1:16:35

I'm enjoying this slide now. If you hear negative things from your audience, then we will not do it again.

Trent Manning: 1:16:41

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

Jim Nedin: 1:17:01

Well, I

Trent Manning: 1:17:02

you know, I mean, I enjoyed that and I do appreciate you being here. I'm trying to think of the scenario. So we got the WhatsApp group and one of the guys was asking, he was having some issues with his 6 48. And he had pretty much done everything, but I don't remember exactly what the problem was. That's the problem. But I have seen, and I wanted to ask your opinion on it. I've seen, and I've done it myself when we used the 10 time holder, we only put in five times and we put, I think, you know, as you're operating the machine, three in the back, two in the front,

Jim Nedin: 1:17:45

Okay.

Trent Manning: 1:17:45

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

Jim Nedin: 1:17:48

Okay. And the ones in the back wear more than the ones in the front?

Trent Manning: 1:17:52

I don't know that I've noticed

Jim Nedin: 1:17:53

Yeah. That's by design. They do. Yeah. I always get I always get questioned about that, man I got 10 times in this thing and the back times where. And I said, yep, they do.

Trent Manning: 1:18:06

Why is that?

Jim Nedin: 1:18:07

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 the nature. Now let me give you a little tip, and I don't know if maybe, you know, if it's a tip, is on a a side eject time, always mount the times so that the hole of the time is going left or right, not to the back.

Trent Manning: 1:18:27

Ah, okay.

Jim Nedin: 1:18:29

You'll get a much cleaner hole. And the reason for that is when the time's coming out of the ground, that window, the bottom part of that window can catch on the edge of the turf, always go left or right. And people look at me like I'm cross-eyed whenever, you know, like, what are you talking? But, you know, that's what we've learned over the years. Always left or right never wanna go front, of course but, you know, avoid going back to the. Go left or right

Trent Manning: 1:18:58

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

Jim Nedin: 1:19:02

much, much cleaner hole. The other thing that I just want to bring up and then we can probably close out the evening is that I often find folks that will adjust the rod for the depth. Okay. And there's a process for that and put it in h and then down at the turf guard, we lift up the turf guard to locate that that little hollow stud that's welded to the frame. And we shove a a five sixteens bolt in there. And that is to simulate h we go to the outer switch operator position, outer switch to the or the right. And we. Then want that switch to give us continuity when it's in H. And if it doesn't give us continuity in H then we would adjust that rod so that we get the little beep while it's in H And that should then simulate the machine being at its deepest depth. Always remember to take the bolt back out when you're done. However, it's of no value to do that unless you check the bushings in the hinge.

Trent Manning: 1:20:05

Oh, okay.

Jim Nedin: 1:20:06

you wanna do that is go to the opposite side of the machine. So you have your springs that are creating your down pressure. Go to the opposite side. And I found so many machines that I could raise and lower that hinge by probably three sixteenths of an inch or so So what happens is this, when it gets so bad and people have an H, they will start to see. Actually grooves being cut into the turf as they're airing. And the reason that for that, the machine's going so much deeper than h because the bushings are bad. And the, actually the carriage bolt heads are rubbing into the turf profile. So you always need to make sure that the hinge is in good shape, that the bushings have minimal wear. And what I mean by that is if you move'em up and down a 16th or something, you're probably okay. But if they move up and down, I've seen'em already three sixteenths of an inch or something. If you let'em wear so bad they're brass and they're keyed, no grease whatsoever. You know, because the grease

Trent Manning: 1:21:15

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:21:16

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 of money,

Trent Manning: 1:21:24

Ah,

Jim Nedin: 1:21:25

wipe out the hinge, the bracket. You know, the everything on on, in that area. So you really want to keep an eye on that. So every once in a while go over and grab the other, the opposite end of where the spring load is and see if you can raise and lower you know that, and it's easy to do. Just go ahead and give it a

Trent Manning: 1:21:42

yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:21:43

And if you've got some pretty good motion there. So next time, perhaps we'll talk about how do you check the timing of a 6 48 to see if the keys are going bad in the crank?

Trent Manning: 1:21:55

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

Jim Nedin: 1:21:57

Okay,

Trent Manning: 1:21:58

That's

Jim Nedin: 1:21:58

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

Trent Manning: 1:22:11

That's good to know. Too special harden,

Jim Nedin: 1:22:14

Yeah, so it's a Toro. Don't go to Napa and buy some key stock and cut it off. Use the correct keys. Originally we used the too hard of a key and it wiped out the journals in the crank arms. And then we went to soft of a key, and then we were having key shear. So it took a little bit of, you know, time to figure this out. So now it's to the point where the key is hard and it'll, it will shear. You know, and hopefully you'll catch it before it does do dims, but I've seen key shear that will literally take that crank, that upper crank, and turn it into a pretzel. I mean, you are talking catastrophic failure. I've seen it on 1290 eights, eight 60 fours, 6, 6 40 eights. So what you want to do periodically is you want to make sure that those keys aren't sheared Now. It doesn't tell you anywhere at all in any book on how to do this. And this is something that we came up with that in the field. It never made it to the books. I don't know, it's just not in a service manual, but I demonstrate this every single time I hold class. I have pictures in my PowerPoint on how to do it. basically what we want to do is to go to number one, which is where the flywheel is, where the pulley is. And we want to rotate that to where number one lines up with with the casting high spot on the casting. And if you look across that crank, that whole crank assembly number six should be lined up right on that as well. If number six, if you see is thrusted forward a bit there's probability of the keys starting to shear. And the reason that's thrust forward is the break. Is on the pulley side. So the brake comes on, but we have inertia all the way over at number six where this crank is spinning, right? And so it now the keys load moving forward. So, when you look at the timing mark for number six against the crest on the casting, and if it's pushed forward, you know, a quarter of an inch or something, that, that might be an indication. So here's what I always do. I note that first, where that's at, 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 fly weight as part of a casting. I will turn that to where it's fairly close to the bottom and you can take between the pulley itself and the. Extrusion of the crank and drop a two by four down vertically against the firewall. And now whenever you turn a little bit more, that Flyway jams against that two by four. Okay, so now the crank can't move on the flywheel side, it's jammed against the two by four. I go all the way over to number six on that fly weight and I'll take a big pipe wrench, maybe even a three foot bar, and I will dance up and down on that puppy. Then I will take the two by four out, take the pipe wrench off of course, turn it back to number one and see where number six is. Now, if number six is going a quarter of an inch in the opposite direction, I know I've got a half inch from pinned key to pinned key in the opposite direction. And so you wanna start thinking about. Should I rebuild this head and put new keys, new bearings? We do recommend every 500 running hours. Original books never said that. But a digging through the archives, I found that now there it is published in the service manual. The recommendation is every 500 hours to inspect. So that's part of the inspecting to see where they go. Okay. And if, and I don't know if you do podcasts where someone's showing a PowerPoint presentation. I don't

Trent Manning: 1:26:32

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

Jim Nedin: 1:26:36

you know, and then I don't need to be the focus, this old guy, you're looking at me for hours.

Trent Manning: 1:26:41

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

Jim Nedin: 1:26:49

So, that, that way it makes it a bit. Clear, more what we're trying to achieve. But yeah, so it's very important to, to to really make sure you do check the the keys in the crank assembly so that you don't have a catastrophic failure.

Trent Manning: 1:27:04

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

Jim Nedin: 1:27:16

well, so they micro shear, you know what I mean? So what I mean by that is you may take it apart and say that, that guy was full of crap. I don't see anything here. If you take your thumbnail and go across where the, you know, the key is engaged in the lower portion, in the upper portion, if you feel a change with your thumbnail that's starting to micro shear.

Trent Manning: 1:27:37

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 1:27:37

So number one key. At number one crank shears the most because it's driving the whole train of six crank arms, right? So it's taking the brunt of the load because it's driving all of the rest. So you just want to keep that in mind. That typically number one, but whenever you rebuild it after 500 running hours, which is recommended bearings and whatnot, you just get the keys as well and, you know, put new keys in and you should be good to go.

Trent Manning: 1:28:06

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think I got one that I need to do pretty soon. I've done one, but that was several years ago,

Jim Nedin: 1:28:13

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 are so to speak. You'll notice at the top of the connecting rod, there's a little high spot. It's like an additional amount of casting. That's where the keys are underneath there.

Trent Manning: 1:28:38

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 1:28:38

so you, you have two a female and a male portion that go, that, that adjoin, that connecting 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.

Trent Manning: 1:28:54

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

Jim Nedin: 1:29:00

I think it's just anti Cs.

Trent Manning: 1:29:02

Anti see, because Well, in the,

Jim Nedin: 1:29:05

they don't use copper, you know, the copper antice or anything like

Trent Manning: 1:29:09

Yeah. Well, the reason I asked, I remember when I took the 6 48 apart last time, I could not believe how pristine all the Anes looked, and this machine was 15 years old

Jim Nedin: 1:29:22

yeah, but I, it, I don't know that there's. I mean, I've been down at the, I used to go down at a factory quite often. I didn't notice any brand name or

Trent Manning: 1:29:33

Yeah. Like Perx or

Jim Nedin: 1:29:34

spec. I'm sure it is probably Perx, if you will. You know, that's, you pretty much your popular brand of anti seeds. Right. That's what I have. But you know, I don't know for sure, but you know, I know that I don't know any brand name that they used to be quite honest with you.

Trent Manning: 1:29:52

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

Jim Nedin: 1:29:57

Well hopefully no dirt got in, so if no dirt got in Right. To contaminate it.

Trent Manning: 1:30:02

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

Jim Nedin: 1:30:15

Well, sure. Yeah, I think that,

Trent Manning: 1:30:17

would be awesome.

Jim Nedin: 1:30:18

I have.

Trent Manning: 1:30:19

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

Jim Nedin: 1:30:24

sure. I mean, yeah, no, I'd be happy to do that. I think it explains it a little better than me just kind of holding my hands up

Trent Manning: 1:30:31

Right, right, right. Yeah,

Jim Nedin: 1:30:32

makes it a little more true to life. You know, as far as what we're trying to, what I'm trying to explain. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, we can figure that out.

Trent Manning: 1:30:43

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