American Choppers

gyroplanes

FAA DAR Gyropilot
Joined
Mar 18, 2004
Messages
6,286
Location
Lansing, Illinois (Chicago South Suburb)
Aircraft
(1) Air Command, (1) Bensen glider project (1) Air Command 2 place kit, (1) Sycamore gyro
Total Flight Time
2650
Paul & Pauly, the boys at Orange County Choppers, are now working on their latest bike inspired by a lawn mower.

Our very own former PRA VP, Art Evans has hired them to do a bike for his "Dixie Choppers" riding mower business.

We got to see Art and his boys on the first episode.

It's a shame Art didn't have his gyro in the shop during their filmed tour.
 
I saw it too last night. Those guys were abusing the heck out of those lawnmowers!!!
 
Those guys were in New Orleans last weekend at the annual Bike Expo in the Superdome. They were making big bucks selling autographed posters. Lines were unbelievably long.

They unveiled a bike built by Mikee and Vinney.

Ron, I'm also in the lawn service business and Dixie Choppers are very popular in this area. Have you seen the one with the turbine engine??
 
Yes I have seen it on Tv. The Dixie Choppers aren't popular at all around here. Not a good dealer to sell them. There used to be a dealer here but he was a A hole and no one would shop there. I have used one before for a few days while my Toro was in the shop. It is a decent mower. Wouldn't say it is much better or worse than most other Commercial riders though. I recently sold all my old mowers and updated my fleet with Scag products. A 61'' Turf Tiger and a 36'' Walkbehind. these Scags cut WAY better than anything else I have used.
 
orange county choppers is right around the corner from where i live the same guy that painted the jet bike and the spiderman bike painted mine.[/IMG]
 

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Hey Gyro Ronnie,
What do you think of Gravely's, I have a large lawn and was think of gettibg one of their walk behinds?
 
Art should have called me instead,I could have saved him 50g`s by having me build his bike. I`ve been building harleys since the 70`s,just don`t have a TV SHOW! One of these would look nice on the back of a Dixie Chopper but might need a set of wheelie bars installed.I built these custom motors for my customers in my shop over the winter. Lot`s of Harley history here! 1964 Panhead stroked to 84",1966 Shovelhead stroked to 88",1992 Evo 10-1 pistons,camed up,big carb. Everybody wants to go real FAST! :eek:
 

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John those are good mowers, a little behind the times in deck design and most are a bit more complicated than need be - more stuff to wear out and or break. Best advise is to buy whatever your local dealer sells. If it is a dealer that has been around a while and has carried that line of mowers for a while and they can assure you they will keep selling that brand, buy it. All commercial mowers are about the same. Same engines, same drive system, Basically the same type and thickness steel, etc... The differences is the bearings in the spindles, the shape or baffles in the deck etc... Minor stuff that can make one mower do a little bit better than the next. I will say if you look real closely at all the mowers you will see Scags have the best built machines out there.

Again it is the little stuff that makes them better. For example, most all mowers use a pulley or two to keep the belts tight. This pulley rides on a Arm that pivots on a steel shaft bolted to the deck or under the engine frame. Every mower I have seen or owned in the past uses a Brass or Bronze Bushing and a Zerk fitting to lubricate this pivot point. Some have no zerk at all. Either way you can grease it everyday or once in a blue moon, no matter how you take care of it the bushings will be wore out in a few hundred hours and the shaft will usually be worn a little too, so new bushings won't take out the slop. Scag uses a heavy duty sealed roller bearing on these pivots on the newer mowers. This means the pivot points are worry free and should last for thousands of hours not 2 or 3 hundred.
 
John, I have a Gravely 260Z that has almost a thousand hours on it and it has been troublefree. We have the number one Gravely dealer in the nation here in Lafayette La.
Ron is correct in that most commercial mowers are nearly identical. My Gravely has a Kohler engine as do most other mowers. Some have Kawasaki. I also have a John Deere with a liquid cooled Kawasaki and it has also been troublefree.

Scags are not popular in this area only because we have the strong Gravely dealer. I have heard they are very good mowers.
 
what ever the " Good " dealer in town sells will be what is popular in that area. I am sure of the number one dealer in Charlotte sold Dixie Choppers we would see hundreds of them running around on trailers.... The number one dealer here in the charlotte Area used to Sell Scags and they were everywhere. Then they sold the yellow Great dane stand on mowers so then everyone had to go out and buy those. Then they started selling Exmark and of course that is what you started to see everywhere and now they sell Toro and there is more and more Toro out there now a days. I bought my Scags from a smaller dealer who picked up the scag line when the other big dealer switched ownership and lost Scag.

Charlotte is a Lawn service Area. There is probably a few hundred small and large companies that do lawn service in this area. Some are just one man operations with one mower in the back of the truck and some are huge companies with 50 to 70 trucks and a few hundred employees. Lot's of smaller companies though. Whatever color and brand mowers you see the large companies use is what you will see all the smaller companies run out and buy. It is like keeping up with the Jones'
 
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