Rototiller Heaven

I might have mentioned this before but I have an old Montgomery Ward rototiller I bought for $75.00 a few years ago. A couple of months later I blew the motor and swapped it out for a used motor I bought to put on my dredge. That was $65.00 and was back in business. Took it to the shop last year and spent $80.00 to get it going after a long sit the next spring. This year I bought a new fuel tank and a couple of gaskets for around $50.00.

That totals to about $270.00.

Let's see though; a new comparible tiller rototiller runs around $700. If i tried to sell mine...I'd be lucky to get $100. Somehow the math doesn't really add up anyway you look at it.  The good news though is that it now run's as good as a new one. Doesn't miss a heartbeat and is working like a champ.

I got out this morning and ran it for an hour or so. My lawn area is closing in on getting ready to be planted. This has been a couple year project.

When I started the area was covered in 4" of gravel and was the driveway. I had a loader come in and scrape out the rocks and spread them down the alley. Then I had him comback and run the tines through it to loosen it up and get the BIG rocks loose. That year I was lucky to make one pass through the area getting the smaller rocks out.

Last year, I hauled in some sandy loam and mulch from the dumps and mixed it all in. The red clay around here is terrible. Since I've done that though the yard no longer floods into the house area though and there are no puddles even in a heavy rain. But rocks are rocks and I still have plenty but not like it was.

I still need to level the dirt and roll it out yet. But I also need to plan for sprinklers which i don't have a clue about. The area is kind of odd shaped. I's at least like to get the pipe and the uprights in the ground prior to planting. so I need to do a little headwork.

If I time it right, I can get the pipe in and seed it...then let Mother Nature get it to grow. We should get enough rain through the winter and early spring I don't have to baby it.

Anyway, none of this is possible without my rototiller for which I am pleased to have it working so well.

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3 responses
It's great having a working tiller. We probably don't need one all that often, but growing up we always had one just in case. Of course, growing up, we had a big garden and needed one. It was just an old tiller frame with a HUGE 7hp motor from some government surplus blower that dad "acquired". It was so heavy it had a tendency to flip over if you weren't careful. When we were in our apartment, we spent $300 on one of those Mantis tillers and used it over my parents house in the flower garden. About a year after we got our house, it crapped out and I found out just how incredibly hard it is to get parts for it or work on it (especially if you don't like spending money). It's a little two cycle engine made my some third party company. Mantis wanted an arm and a leg to fix it so I checked two local places and they couldn't even order parts. It's still in the back of the garage somewhere. The "guts" could actually be hooked up to something else like maybe a weed eater motor, but I didn't feel like messing up the weed eater to find out. At least, not yet.
— dewitte
I looked at those and they look cute...but cute doesn't even come close to breaking up my dirt. The only thing those are good for is a quick job on dirt that has a high content of sand or something. Soory to hear about your loss. You might find a used one on craigslist or something to make one out of two.
— TechZilla
Thanks. They work really well when you want to do some quick digging in a pre-existing garden, like right around your plants. They are also great at breaking up a pile of dirt and helping you spread it around. They would never replace a nice big one, but I think they'd make a good addition to one. I always wanted one of those wheel in front, tiller in the back big ones. We haven't had a big garden in a while, but if we do, I'm sure that's what we'd need.
— dewitte