Since I bought my Atex 4wd mower from Stihl Shop Motueka it has mowed for 246 hours without needing any repairs or replacements apart from 3 sets of blades. Seem a lot of blades? Wait til you read what the mower has been asked to do! It’s life started in a wetland restoration project. That involved creating a network of tracks through gorse and blackberry 2-3 metres high with uneven silt and waterholes underneath.
After 3 kilometres or so of 2 metre wide tracks we went looking for the next challenge. An organic farm wanted the orchard,vegetable beds and pond surrounds cleared after a couple of years of neglect. One puncture and numerous bits of wire and farm bits and pieces later we moved on to a piece of land beside the Buller river that used to be a landcorp farm and was a mixture of bush, blackberry, 1-3 metre high broom and a very large number of granite boulders! 6 kilometres of track, 1 hectare of completely cleared land [now grass] and a lot of hours later we returned to the wetland.
This time an area needed clearing for planting in sedges and flax. This involved getting rid of 1.8 metre high clumps of tall fescue grass, the biggest challenge yet as we got stuck a few times on top of clumps with all 4 wheels off the ground or churning liquid mud! It got done! All this cleared stuff is still regularly mowed and extended with the odd large and immaculate lawn thrown in. The Atex handles them all, as well as 30 degree sideways mowing in ditches [no sign of tipping yet!] I have been really pleased with its performance, the belt drive has never given any trouble, even when the blades are grinding boulders to sand. I have one 45 degree bank, 5 metres high, of mostly boulders to descend and climb to access one track. It does it with ease. The robust construction, clever 4wd system and diff lock means theres almost no limit to where you can take it, even 200 mm deep water just slows it down! Brilliant machine......and the seats pretty comfortable too.
Terry Stanbridge