Swisher RC11544CL - Classic 44" 11.5 HP Rough Cut Trailcutter

This is a good rough mower. Please read the before you start directions. You have to add oil and reconnect the spark plug. It’s in the directions.

Mower works great. I use it to cut everything from tall grass to blackberry bushes. I was able to clear large areas of my property with ease.

Was a lot of work to remove from shipping crate, was very well packed!Great machine... perfect for my needs.

It's Basically, a mini Bush hog lol !!!! Works great 👍 , If it's too big for your lawnmower to cut and you don't have a tractor and Bushhog then it's just what you need to get the job done !!!!!!!

It started really easy and did a wonderful job. We are installing and maintaining trails through some heavy brush

I bought this recently at another online store under the part number RC11544BS. It's all black, but it is this model (part # and color updates for 2018?). It's a robust and effective field and brush cutter. I've used it for about 7 hours and cleared some pretty uneven and overgrown wild areas of old Goldenrod, with saplings between 1 and 3 inches in diameter.The mower is powerful and has never bogged down. You might have to go over the area though a couple times to really cut it all down as the first pass might leave some short stalks. I've run it over some really rough ground with hidden logs, waterlogged ruts and old anthills and it never has a problem. It will make banging sounds and slow down its rotation a little as the blades swing back and forth as it hits obstructions, but it has withstood all that effort admirably. You might have to adjust the cutting height as you go in rough areas to reduce the stump jumping and dirt chopping it'll do if the cut is set too low, but it will cope with those.The blade engagement handle mounts nicely on my ATV rear rack to my left using one M8 bolt and washer. No need to fit the 4-bolt mounting plate that it comes with, making the install quick and simple with a 13mm wrench.At 5 hours, the oil needs changing. That's easy as there is a valve that you can connect a tube to and your drain pan sits nicely on the lower level of the body below the engine. As with all such motors, there's some shiny metal particles in the oil - part of the running in.One issue that I did have, at about 6 hours, was more vibration than usual when the blades were turning. The motor was shaking a lot and the mower oscillating from side to side. I thought I'd chewed up a blade to cause some imbalance. After finishing cutting the field grass, I worked out how to raise the mower using my car ramps and looked underneath. One blade was not rotating freely. A small but poor design feature; the blade is retained by a large bolt that screws into a thick tapped plate on the top of the stump jumper plate. A Nyloc nut is tightened onto the bolt above the plate, acting as a lock nut to stop the bolt unscrewing. The bolt is left loose against the blade to allow it to rotate on the bolt. It looks like the locknut might have been loose or the bolt too tightly fitted so that it had been tightened by the rotation of the blade. I loosened the lock nut easily, but the bolt was seized tight.I used brute force, a 700 lbft impact wrench and a 4 ft cheater bar on my socket wrench to no avail. Even heating up the plate didn't help. So, I applied PB Blaster penetrating fluid and left it for 30 minutes or so. Still nothing could loosen the bolt. In the end, I just used the 4 ft cheater tube over my 60+ year old (it was my dad's) Husky 14" long wrench handle and 1 1/8" socket and with my foot on the mower wheel and a wood chock between the mower body and the stump plate, pulled as hard as I could, expecting the wrench handle to break. Just as I reached my strength limit, the bolt broke loose. The Husky wrench handle was totally undamaged and straight! (you can't beat the old quality tools). It was then obvious that trying to tighten the locknut and yet keep the bolt still and the blade loose takes some coordination. The design should have used a hardened spacer on the bolt to set the gap precisely and allow the bolt to be tightened fully down onto the spacer, with the blade rotating on the spacer. After eventually getting the locknut nice and tight with the blade free to rotate, the motor vibration was back to normal.Interestingly, considering the heavy work I had used the mower for, the blades looked really good with just a few minor dings on the cutting edge - impressive!I spent quite some time looking for a quality brush mower and it seems I found it in the Swisher!