Seen a lot of dogs missing legs from a sickle bar mower. Have fun!

My first question would be if it is a ditch why does it need to be mowed.
Secondly.... how can they say it is the landowners' responsibility when the township has the right-away for a certain amount of feet from the center of the road.
If they don't want to mow it and I don't care to I would just let it go.

I don't know how well a sickle blade mower will work if it has to be laid that far below level so you can keep your tractor on more level ground. There are people that own hyraulic bush mowers that run on the side of the tractor. I would see if you have someone in the area with that type of a setuip. I don't know the reason you want to mow the ditch unless it is to kill off the shrubs, brush and other decidous plants. Simple 2-4-D will do that for you.

Bryce

My thought too. If you have to: Maybe hang a couple of sacks full of rock or ? on the uphill side o counter weigh the roll tendency.

Can you declare it wildlife reserve/habitat? LOL From your pics it's nowhere near a road, why were they mowing it anyway?

I agree with Steve here. If the township wants it done, they can do it.
I'm sure they lowered your taxes a little since they no longer provide this service, right?

You could try Herschel Adams out of Indianola for parts we’ve used a lot of their stuff, if you get a chance pm a picture of the sickle to me and I’ll see if I can help.

https://www.herschelparts.com/

Have been able to source some Herschel sickle parts local.......stuff like hold downs, shims, sickle sections, section rivets etc. Looks like very good stuff.

JD Parts book shows three different guard numbers, and we used part number for same guards on it now (old, bent, missing ledgers, etc) and when they arrived, they were not same geometry. The sickle bar the sections rivet to no longer drops into the slot, so sections ride about 1/8" high above the guard ledgers.....so sickle does not cut, it binds and plugs. These from JD, plus a few aftermarket sources. All have same problem and none have worked. Am down to my last option from JD.

If can be made to work, does have utility.......mowing pond dams, road banks, under fence row trees, etc. plus small creek banks that can't be reached by brush hog wings. And all that while being pulled by a dinky 40 hp tractor. If it could be made to work.

Do your old guards have bars on them pushing the sickle bar forward? If it does you’ll have to loosen them up and slide them back.

I wouldn't bother to mow it. Makes good habitat for birds.

And Rabbits!

This is my guards/bar setup.........the mower bar itself is about 1/2" or so thick x about 4 inches fore and aft.........and 9 feet long......so offset that much, it puts a lot of strain on the hitch end. Bolted to underside of the bar are the guards.........bolted flush to the bottom, and at front end is a small turned up lip / claw that prevents guards from moving side to side. These are held up by a special plow bolt style like a carriage bolt......no movement at all......fore and aft or side to side.




The problem I seem to be having is with that small lip / claw. The original old guards have a lip of maybe 1/8". Guards ordered from JD using same part number have a different, taller lip. Now maybe 3/16" or more..........and that seems to be where the problem lies.



The sickle bar......the bar stock to which the sections are riveted to.....slide along just above that lip....at least with old guard. Very close tolerance, but not touching. With new replacement guards, it slides on that lip........so does not drop down into the slot to allow sections to register on and touch the ledgers on the guards. These have to touch so they shear like scissors.......and these were not.

Green guard on right is my 5th and final option for my Obi-Wan replacement guard. My last and only hope.



If that works, then on to replacing all the hold downs, pull and sharpen sickle, etc. Plus there are 3 or 4 major adjustments to get this set right to cut. There is a lot to know to get these tuned and running right. There is a reason why the modern era replacement is a disc bower...........but takes a big tractor and big HP to run one of those.

Come to think of it, if OP has a big enough tractor, a disc mower might work for him.

Yup, that’s why I wondered if there was a wear bar pushing the sickle forward on the old guards that prevented it from moving back, that’s usually the problem, but I see that they’re made really different so that’s a big issue, some of the PTO driven disc mowers take less power but they still pull.