McLane 17-PH-7 17-Inch 7-Blade Push Front-Throw Reel Mower

I love this mower.I bought this mower for the new home my Wife and I built. It is a 1/3 of an acre lot so I definitely get my work out... I have already lost 10 pounds this summer using this mower; on that size lot is not "easy" but it is definitely possible and getting better the more I use it. I mow every 2 to 3 days and my yard looks amazing! Especially seeing as the sod is only 3 or 4 months old. I installed a roller kit on the front and it works very well. I also have 3 large pecan trees in my backyard and limbs are constantly in the yard. I pick up the big ones but this mower chews through the smaller limbs no problem. (Has a nice ping sound as it chews through them.) This mower also handles tall grass very well, every now and then I may have to back up 6 or so inches and go again (no adjustment to the height) to get those tall pieces but it is very rare. (especially since I mow every two days, these tall pieces are usually ones that pop up here and there and are random)At first I was very cautious about hitting foreign objects in the yard and "dinging" the blades or bed knife. I found a socket that I could put on my dewalt and backlap it, and is really not a bad process at all using valve grinding compound from local autozone... but what I did find, especially being on a new home construction site, if I dinged a rock or something in the yard, and the noise would "change" clearly because there was a ding in the blades, if I just kept using it the noise would eventually go away. Mower still cuts perfectly fine, and its almost as the more I use it the better the blades get. (haven't backlapped it since discovering this) I will probably have the reel and bed knife properly grinded at the end of this season but I bring this up for those new to reel mowers to say that, dinging the blade/bed knife is not a show stopper and the mower still cuts amazing. If I were growing a putting green in my back yard then I would definitely not recommend the above statement, although even with the above statement the yard still looks amazing.I still need to level the yard, once I do that this mower will definitely perform well enough to have putting green grade turf in my entire yard as I will be able to lower it even lower.All and all I love this mower and would highly recommend it to anyone.

i have a small yard and a small garage. i was running out of room in my garage to store my traditional lawnmower during the winter. also, because i don't use it much, once i had to start mowing the lawn again, it was hard to get the lawnmower started. i thought this push mower would solve both problems. because i could lean it up against a wall, it didn't take up as much space as my old lawnmower and i never had to worry about it starting.i don't think i have a lot of thatch in my lawn, but when the mower arrived, i raised the back wheels as much as possible and started to mow. i couldn't go more than a few feet before the mower would get tangled up in the thatch and i'd have to back up and go at it again. after doing this a few times, i decided i needed to raise the front wheels and back wheels more. moving the wheels wasn't a big deal, but what mclane overlooked was that once you do so, the chain guard doesn't fit back on. you have to move some adjustment screws on the chain guard and those are really tough to get at because the reels are in the way.after messing around with the mower for a few hours, i needed to get the grass cut because people were coming over, so i decided to mow without the chain guard on. while mowing around my tree, a piece of tree bark got caught in the chain and caused it to slip off the front sprocket. the sprocket's made out of plastic and when the chain was slipping off, it rounded a couple of teeth. now, every time the chain goes over those teeth, it slips off the sprocket again. a few places i've looked at locally sell the replacement sprocket for ~$50.$50 for a plastic sprocket that goes on a $270 mower.$270 and couldn't even mow my lawn once.

Received a damaged unit that actually prevented me from assemblying the product. A wheel was also bent out of positition. It's unfortunate as the mower seemed to be well constructed otherwise. it appears to be a solid steel mower and the experience didn't prevent me from ordering a replacement through Amazon and will update my review once i receive it. Just beware once you unpackage.

Works well.

Honestly, I never used one of these so I probably don't have the best advice on them. I just bought a new house with a tiny yard and was tired of the dust and noise associated with mowing my old yard with a riding mower. I wanted to go back to basics and I don't think I could have gone any farther back besides using scissors.I'll go ahead and start off with this...it seems all of the people with complaints keep their yard waaaay to tall to be using one of these. I like my grass 1.5 inches at most. The people that lived here before my kept the front yard about 3" and the back about 1.5". I started in the back and marveled at how easy it was to mow. I was incredibly happy until I tried to take on the front yard...it took FOR-EV-ER (insert sandlot imagery). I could only mow about two feet at a time before pulling back and making the push into the next two feet. I lost about four pounds and drank two gallons of water to cut about 300sqft of lawn. I quickly realized that this is not for those that do not like to cut grass often. Fortunately, once the task was done, cutting was a breeze the following weeks. You do have to make sure the lawn is free of twigs and anything hard as it will stop up the blades. A quick 10 minute prep with a rake or blower is more than worth the peace that comes with using this mower and my grass has never looked so good.So, to sum up, if you want to use this mower and not hate it..-clean your yard from debris before you mow-keep your grass below 2"-get use to being stared at by the neighbors and passer bys as they wonder who's grandfather's basement you got this from