Go up hills easy! My self propelled mower review of the Troy-Bilt 4×4 XP. Watch the video and then read through my comments below.
Why I Like This Self Propelled Mower:
Great Power
Ease of Steering
Troy-Bilt Quality
Full disclosure here, Troy-Bilt has been a sponsor of GardenFork for a while now. I wouldn’t work with them if I didn’t believe in their products or their company. I’ve met about 20 people who work at Troy-Bilt and have been using their products for years. They are good people and they make good stuff. Here’s a vid about a volunteer project we did recently with Troy-Bilt
OK, back to the 4 WD self propelled mower. It will pull you up hills.
Yes, its that simple. I took this lawn mower over to my neighbor’s hilly cow pasture and went through 12″ high grass mix up a hill with no problems. And that’s with the mower set the mulching mode.
On the mower handle you can choose front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, or four wheel drive, pretty easy. I used it in all modes but found 4WD worked best for me.
Talking about Troy-Bilt quality, it the small things that matter, like how they attach the gas cap to the fuel tank. Ever lost your gas cap? I have.
I suggest buying this mower with the large rear wheels and the Honda engine. If you change the oil in your lawn mower, it can last forever.
Its easy to adjust the height of the wheels for grass cutting height. Note the larger real wheels, makes it much easier to drive around and steer. Its all about ease of use, why make it hard to cut the grass?
Like most, this self propelled mower comes with a bagger and a side discharge and a mulching mode. I like to mulch the grass, so I did not use the bag feature, but its in the box with the mower if you want to make compost from your grass clippings.
I give this mower a thumbs up, its a quality machine, and the 4WD is brilliant. You will like this rig.
After using the Flex system all summer, here is our Troy Bilt Flex review video. We used the lawnmower and pressure washer attachments with the Flex power base around the house, here’s our take on it.
Note: This is a Sponsored Post sponsored. Troy Bilt sent me the Flex and compensated me for my time, but all opinions are my own
The GardenFork Troy Bilt Flex Review
I like the Troy Bilt Flex concept of one engine that connects to multiple pieces of outdoor power equipment. Its much easier to maintain one engine than 4 or 5 of them every year.
The power base has a 208cc engine with ample power to run everything that attaches to it. I like that the engine has an oil dipstick and an easy oil drain plug, plus a solid gas cap. The wheels are air filled knobby tires and the power base is self propelled. The handles fold back onto the unit for space saving storage, a nice feature.
The lawn mower has a 28″ wide deck, which is 8″ wider than most walk behind mowers. The front wheels are solid and can be set to free wheel or lock straight for when you are mowing on inclines. Two blades under the deck work nicely. I used the deck in mulching mode, but you can set it for side discharge or you can order a grass collection bag for it.
The pressure washer is quite nice, it will do everything I will ever need a pressure washer to do. It has 5 quick connect nozzles and can generate 3,000 psi of power. You can attach a hose to the pump for cleaning solution injection. I really like that it has a 40′ hose on it. I need to wash the clapboard on our 2 story house, and I don’t have to buy an additional length of hose to reach the 2nd story. This will come in handy if you are washing down large equipment.
The Troy Bilt Flex also has a snowblower and leaf blower attachments that we did not test. I don’t blow our leaves, and it being summer, well, no snow.
Here’s my Troy Bilt Flex review after using the Flex Power Base and the Wide Area Mower and Pressure Washer around the GardenFork Testing Grounds. The testing grounds, otherwise known as my yard, are typical of what your average homeowner has: grass, trees, some weeds, dogs.
Full Disclosure: Troy Bilt has compensated me for my time and provided me with their products. Opinions are mine own, and I don’t work with companies that aren’t a good fit for me or the GardenFork audience. More info here.
I’ve known the Troy-Bilt brand for many years. Their rear tine rototillers are the best, I think, and make life easy, especially if you’ve ever wrestled with a front tine tiller.
So when I was asked if I’d like to try out Troy Bilt’s new Flex system, I signed on. The delivery truck brought 3 boxes of Flex components, and I got 4 free wood pallets from the truck driver. Neat.
Attachments snap on to Flex Power Base
The Troy-Bilt Flex Review
Here’s the way I describe the Flex system: Its all based on a power unit that a bunch of different tools snap onto. The Flex base is like the rear half of a walk behind self propelled snowblower with a PTO out the front that snaps into several different attachments. I like the idea of having one power source and a bunch of outdoor equipment attachments. So I only have to maintain one engine, not an engine for every outdoor power tool in the garage. Plus, you save on garage storage space – the attachments have a smaller footprint – making it all easier to store.
Power Base on left, Mower deck on right
If you’ve ever been on a working farm, all the tractors have a PTO (power take off) shaft on the back and sometimes front to run different machines, this is the same concept for the Flex line.
Right now Troy-Bilt has mower, snow thrower, pressure washer, and leaf blower attachments for the power base, I’m told a log splitter and a few other attachments are in the works. I’d really like that log splitter, it would make fast work of the pines I’ve been dropping for next winter’s sap season.
I chose the Wide Area Mower and the Pressure Washer attachments to test out. The back of my clapboard house has mold growing on it, so this was perfect. We’ll be making a video showing the power washing and mowing this summer.
First I snapped on the mower deck.
What I like about the Troy-Bilt Flex Wide Area Mower:
It feels solid. This is kinda intangible, I know, but you know how some mowers just feel cheap? This doesn’t, it has good feel and nice power.
The power wheels are better, they are pnuematic, meaning they have air in them instead of solid plastic wheels of many self-propelled walk behinds. The rig powers nicely through the lawn. The drive system is robust, unlike many self-propelled mowers that have a small belt that powers the wheels.
The mower deck is 28″ wide, so I’m already saving time from my 20″ wide walk behind mower. Rough math tells me that every 3 passes with the Flex is 4 passes with my smaller mower.
The front wheels spin free, so you can make surprisingly tight turns for such a large mower deck. You can also lock the wheels for when you are mowing on hills for better control.
Front wheels free spin or lock straight
The Flex powers through the yard at a nice clip with enough power to go up a moderate hill. The lever that controls the speed of the wheels takes a few minutes to master, the low end of the range is short, so when you grab the lever, it starts moving faster than you expect at first. You should wear ear protection, the Flex mower isn’t super loud, but it all adds up.
I then worked with the Pressure Washer attachment. Here’s where the advantages of the Flex system become clear. I don’t have to own a pressure washer that has its own engine, this pressure washer just snaps onto the Flex base. One less engine to maintain.
The pressure washer comes with 5 spray nozzles and 40′ of hose, plenty to get up to the 2nd floor of your house and wash the siding. It pumps 3,000 psi, which is more than enough for what you all are doing around the house. I used a friend’s power washer a while back and it was made mostly of plastic, this isn’t. Plus I like the hose rack, its large enough to store all of the hose, unlike some other washers I’ve used where the hose storage never works.
I know GardenFork is all about ‘done is better than perfect’, but sometimes the details matter, and the photo below makes that clear to me. When I put gas in the Flex tank, I saw the cap was chained, and the chain was metal, not plastic. It’s not something many would notice, but that tells me the people who designed this designed it to last.
I’ll be doing a Troy Bilt Flex Review video this summer, where we power wash one of the plywood boats, wash the back of the house, and power through my lawn in 2/3 the time it takes with the smaller mower I own.
UPDATE: here’s the video review of the FLEX:
To read more about the Troy Bilt Flex and other outdoor power equipment, here is their website, plus:
Kim of Sand and Sisal reviewed the Troy Bilt 4 cycle trimmer that has a ton of attachments. I got to use this gear when we went to meet Troy Bilt, and its a nice set of tools.
On this episode of GardenFork Radio we talk about standing desks and how you can make one from IKEA parts. We also talk about how to use Evernote to keep your to do list and how Evernote can be very very simple or very complicated.
Our new website is powered by StudioPress Themes for WordPress we’ve used several themes from different WordPress theme companies, and I think StudioPress is the best one. The site loads much faster and I like the clean design we are using.
We talk about using one of our website hosts, BlueHost , if you want to have your own private email or build a wordpress website, BlueHost has a very affordable plan.
I prefer to keep Evernote simple and it works for me. Also we talked about push lawnmowers, specifically push lawnmowers that don’t have an engine, and they have a cutting reel. GF listener Scott likes one that is made by Fiskars. Tanya writes to tell us about how Gordon Ramsay cooks stovetop pizza.
We recently had a how-to video on how to make stove top pizza here is the link and Tonya talks about how she makes pizza herself. Finally Jim ass why we have two different garden fork shows now and I talk a little bit about that
