Earthquake front or rear tine tiller?

[Zeedman]

A quick addendum to my previous comments on the Earthquake 31285 "Pioneer" tiller.

With a new wheel bolt & locking pin installed, I again tilled the home gardens. I had double-checked & tightened all bolts, so nothing fell off this time.

- The clutch control has levers on both sides, so can be easily guided from either left or right.
- The machine profile is well designed, so that when tilling next to the fence, there are no sharp edges to catch on the fence. The only thing which might catch is the wheels, which stick out slightly.
- The shift lever seems to be loosening up, it got easier to shift after several times.

Because I was mainly just tilling under leaves & amendments, I had the depth set to about 2". It broke up & buried everything, and was very easy to control from the side. The motor only bogged down once, when I hit some harder ground at the garden's edge. Because I intend to lengthen one of the gardens anyway, I tried out the counter-rotating mode on some sod. It did not break all of the sod, but the ground was still wet & I still had the depth setting at 2", so that may not have been a good test.

And while tilling, I found the missing wheel bolt!

DW & I have been hitting the nurseries & big box home stores a lot recently. Both the local farm & fleet, and one of the home improvement stores, now carry Earthquake rear-tine tillers in addition to their usual selection of front-tine models... so apparently Ardisam (who manufactures Earthquake) is prepared to take advantage of the garden boom.

EDIT: Tilled the home gardens again today, to turn under 3 trash cans full of dry leaves. After that, the ground was dry enough that I tried breaking sod in counter-rotating mode. The wheels bogged down, but the engine didn't, and the tines chewed up the sod thoroughly. The process was slower than I've experienced with bigger machines; but compared to those larger machines, relatively effortless. It appears to be strong enough to manage a small to medium sized garden.

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

I love that you found the bolt. It's funny how those things turn up. I just found the big plastic wing-nut for my bagger attachment to my riding mower in my landscaping rock. Just sitting there right where I've been walking over ever since it went missing about a year ago :/

 

[catjac1975]

A quick addendum to my previous comments on the Earthquake 31285 "Pioneer" tiller.

With a new wheel bolt & locking pin installed, I again tilled the home gardens. I had double-checked & tightened all bolts, so nothing fell off this time.

- The clutch control has levers on both sides, so can be easily guided from either left or right.
- The machine profile is well designed, so that when tilling next to the fence, there are no sharp edges to catch on the fence. The only thing which might catch is the wheels, which stick out slightly.
- The shift lever seems to be loosening up, it got easier to shift after several times.

Because I was mainly just tilling under leaves & amendments, I had the depth set to about 2". It broke up & buried everything, and was very easy to control from the side. The motor only bogged down once, when I hit some harder ground at the garden's edge. Because I intend to lengthen one of the gardens anyway, I tried out the counter-rotating mode on some sod. It did not break all of the sod, but the ground was still wet & I still had the depth setting at 2", so that may not have been a good test.

And while tilling, I found the missing wheel bolt!

DW & I have been hitting the nurseries & big box home stores a lot recently. Both the local farm & fleet, and one of the home improvement stores, now carry Earthquake rear-tine tillers in addition to their usual selection of front-tine models... so apparently Ardisam (who manufactures Earthquake) is prepared to take advantage of the garden boom.

I looked up your tiller-it's quite a monster! It looks like it should do a great job. It looks a bit more complicated than our old troy built. We have the big monster. It was always too much for me even when I was young. I use the TB Bronco and my fav, the Mantis. Much easier for me to use. They all have their jobs. I would not till when the soil is wet.

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

More to follow

 

[digitS']

A Learning Experience ahead ...

I have run one or another Craftsman into the back of a pickup for decades - left side of bed, against the front of the bed, and slide the ramp in on the right side.

The new Craftsman tiller has the choke in the front. Also, the recoil starter is in the front but I have to pull it from the left side. With it at the front of the bed, can I reach the choke? I can't start it from the back of the tiller?? The ramp and tiller can be rearranged in there but I have to pull the starter with my left hand??? Sure glad the tractor guy arrived at the garden and did a pretty good tilling job before I started on things out there !

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

More to follow

View attachment 40546

interesting pun. hopefully intentional. if not, don't tell me.

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

So it's funny that I started this whole discussion with the Earthquake Tiller and then went with a brand I had never really thought of before, but here I am with a brand new DR PRO XLDRT

So back in Feb I made the decision to go with this DR tiller for a few reasons. A lot of the big rear-tines I think are basically the same, right? Big engine, counter or forward rotating tines, forward and reverse, ... but one difference I noted with this was that this model allowed you to switch it to neutral without messing around with pins on the tire as most other models did. That might not always be a concern, but if I needed to move it in winter, since this will be in the same garage as my saws and stuff, I wanted to easily be able to move it without having to start it or fight with a pin *shrug*

Glorious, right? Nope. So I made the decision to go with them but because of Covid their logistics were all messed up. Last year they sold out of tillers by April and then weren't able to manufacture again until October or November. Also, they were saying shipping was 8 weeks out, which meant end of April to early May (oof!!). I called them up because their site said they had a drop depot about an hour from me, but that ended up being not true and instead their closest drop point was 5 hours away in South Dakota. So it was that or find a local business that would allow a truck to drop it there, but shipping was still going to be over $100 and I still wouldn't see it until May . So looking on their site I saw True Value was a distributer and called up one of their stores about 25 min from me and asked if they could do a drop there. They owner had never heard of the brand before but said sure. Then he said "huh, well we could do that or I could get you one next week". I guess True Value had A LOT sitting in a regional warehouse. So I jumped on that opportunity and sure enough the following week he called me up, I went and got my tiller and saved $100 on shipping yay!!!

Super, right? No. So I got it home, put it together but as I was putting it together a plastic piece inside the throttle control busted, which kept you from being able to adjust the throttle . I hadn't even added oil or gas and it was already in an unusable state.


Their support folks were nice, but it looks like covid bit me anyways as the ship date for a replacement was pushed out twice from late March, to mid-April and then to early May. So, in the end I still didn't get to start my tiller until just yesterday

I couldn't believe it when I got the shipping notice; and then UPS teased me more by sending me a "click this link to see where the truck is" email, which killed me seeing this truck drive all over a map in some crazy route going everywhere but my house. I don't know if I've ever been as excited to get a UPS package - well, maybe when my blu ray and poster of Call Girl of Cthulhu showed up. Anyways, once the package got here I ripped it open, installed the new throttle control and the thing started on the first pull.

So, 8 weeks of waiting paid off and I was finally able to finally start tilling up my garden areas yesterday. And how does it work? Like a dream.

Beginning to end took 45 min with a stop for beer and chatting with kids who were asking what this thing does. Next will be the squash & watermelon area then inside the chicken run to fight the thistle as it starts to shoot to the sky. The process sucked and it was $900, but I'm happy with the product at this point.



Finally, since finding videos of someone actually using it was hard to find I had our 6 year old film me taking a pass with it. You'll not that the sunflower stalks hold it up at the beginning since it hits the front, but once I get it around that it tills that up no problem.