Hello I'm Austin Jarrett from Allett Mowers. We receive a lot of questions about which mower
should I choose; The Buckingham 20 or the Westminster 20? On the surface of it they
both look very similar machines. Both of these machines are from our heavy duty semi-pro or club
range. The Westminster 20H is designed for close cutting. It's a petrol mower and is ideal for
cricket wickets, bowling greens, golf greens or even the finest ornamental lawn but this is about
low cutting and you need to consider this machine only if you're prepared to be mowing twice a week.
The Buckingham20H is a general purpose mower. It delivers a very fine lawn with a professional
grade finish. It's amazing at strong, long lasting stripes, and this machine is available not only in
a 20 inch but a 24 and a 30 inch too. Let's take a closer look at the differences between these
two mowers. You'll see that both these machines are from the same part of the Allett family.
They've both got a very strong heritage and often when I'm speaking to customers
that are coming on looking to replace an exact machine or very similar machine,
then they're replacing a machine that is decades years old not just a few years old; very strong
semi-professional machines.That is really indicated in the weight of these products,
you cannot pick up either these products products to be able to lift them up steps. The Buckingham20
comes in 103 kilos and the Westminster's slightly lighter and we'll look at the reasons why at 92
kilograms but neither of these machines can I pick them up and put them into the boot of the car.
If we start at the front and we'll look at the rollers.
Both of the rollers are common to the machine for both machines and they're both steel and zinc
plated for rust resistance.The difference comes in the height adjustment and on the Buckingham
machine where the accuracy of height of cut is not so critical then we have two lock nuts
and then a turn gear wheel here which i can turn which lifts and lowers the roller.
The height of cut for the Buckingham is as low as five millimetres absolutely minimum
up to 35 millimetres which is as high as you would ordinarily want to cut with a cylinder mower. On
the Westminster20 the height of cut becomes much more critical. We are mowing as low
as 2.4 millimetres up to 19 millimetres so this really only mows as high as you would expect to
mow a low lawn. But, when you're mowing bowling greens, golf greens or cricket wickets you are
working definitely down at the bottom level of these heights of cut. Additionally with the front
roller on the Westminster we have a scraper which is adjustable with these four screws,
and the reason you have a scraper on this machine is if we start to pick up worm casts or wet grass
clippings on the front roller it will start to alter the height of cut quite significantly
and because we bought this machine for very accurate heights of cut the scraper is a major
contributor to maintaining the height of cut as we've set it. To adjust the scraper you simply do
that through these four screws just here if I back those off using a 10 millimetre spanner or wrench
and then what I do is I just use a piece of cardboard because I want the scraper to be
as close to the roller as i can possibly get but at the same time I don't want it touching
and wearing either the blade or the roller so by backing it off I take a piece of cardboard
which I've folded in two, it's quite thin art cardboard and then once I've put that in place
I just squeeze the blade to make sure it sits correctly and then I can tighten that up.
Once I've tightened this side up I can then remove the cardboard,
insert it on the other side, push the scraper up to that and tighten this side.
Then when I rotate the roller I know that i've got absolute minimum clearance on there
and it's adjusted correctly without wearing the scraper blade.
To change the height of cut on the Westminster of course
needs to be much more accurate than it is with the general purpose machine
and we have locking nuts on either side here and then we have a micro-adjust knob which we can turn
and very accurately and incrementally adjust the height of cut to get this exactly right.
Both of these machines use a comb which runs just behind the front roller. These combs are
both great for raking weed grasses that are lying flat and for standing the grass upright in order
to present to the bottom blade, and of course by combing the grass all in the same direction
it without doubt helps as well with the contrast in the light green dark green stripes.The
combs are actually different on both of these products the comb on the Buckingham is put into
a position, so we set this normally two to three millimetres below the height of cut and the comb
on the Westminster because we're generally mowing much lower actually is adjusted by pressure
so the tine itself actually almost drags through the sward with a continuous pressure
to comb those low growing grasses upright. On a cricket wicket it means that we can mow down to
target heights much more quickly and bowling greens it helps to give a more consistent
ball speed no matter where you are on the green. Then we move on to the cutting cylinder this is
really the business end of the mower of course and you'll have noticed already the most striking
difference is the six bladed cylinder on the general purpose Buckingham and the 12 bladed
cylinder which is fitted to the Westminster. So what's that all about? With the Buckingham
we are generally cutting more grass, we're cutting at a lesser frequency and so we need to be able
to handle a larger volume of grass clippings and we're also not mowing so low with the Westminster
by definition we're mowing low and we're mowing more frequently that's a lesser volume
of grass clippings so by having more blades the cylinder isn't going to get choked up, but more
importantly when i'm mowing at very low heights the clip rate becomes very much more apparent.
So the six bladed cylinder gives us a clip rate of 73 clips per metre and if you work that out that
means that the cylinder is cutting against the bottom blade about every 14 millimetres of travel.
When you get twice the clip rate we're now at 145 clips per metre, we're getting seven millimetre
differences between where we're clipping so on lower heights of cut you're going to get a
much smoother finish and the the clips will not be apparent even at the lowest heights of cut.
Both of these machines use the Honda GX120 engine with a 3.1 litre fuel tank and that's a 196 CC
displacement that's bags of power for whichever of these machines you're going to use and remember
we use exactly the same engine on our 30 inch wide machine and that copes with a trailing seat
admirably. Next let's look at the rear roller because these are quite different too. The rear
roller is so important on the cylinder mowers they control the height of cut, they drive the
mower along and of course they create the stripes that we so want when we're using an Allett mower.
The rear roller on the Westminster (the more precise machine) remember is a fully machined
aluminium rear roller and that's why this machine is slightly lighter than the Buckingham. We have
in both systems a paul and ratchet differential system and both rollers are split into two
and the reason we do that is because when we're straight lining we want to be able to correct
our direction just slightly but without the drive affecting that and when we come to turn at the end
we don't want to cause great scuffing at the end which will wear our grass but by having the roller
differential driven it means that both rollers can drive at their own speed without causing scuffing.
On the rear roller of the Westminster as well we have a spring-loaded scraper again. We don't
want any build up on the rear roller because the height of cut is so critical and so fine. On the
more robust Buckingham machine you'll notice the black roller there and that's because this is a
heavy duty steel roller and this is actually got a bonded rubber coating with a tread cut into that.
That gives us great traction and we need that for the Buckingham especially when we're pulling the
trailing seat but just because of the general purpose nature of it I can drive this up ramps
into the back of the vehicle with good traction and I can drive it around the garden or workplace
on hard surfaces without it making noise. Both of these machines have the same handbrake assembly as
well so I just simply move this lever in order to break the rear roller and of course that's handy
if I'm mowing on slopes so when I return after emptying the grass box my mower is still there.
The aluminium roller of course is so much more delicate than the really robust rubber coated
steel and the optional extra that we have so that you don't damage this roller when
driving over gravel or on pavements because we really want to keep this in good condition
is that we have a wheel kit. This machine comes as standard already with the stub axles provided
at the side and what we buy when we buy the wheel kit is the stand and so I have a stand here which
allows me just to lift the back end of the machine up and then I have wheels which i can just insert
onto the machine and there's a really clever little clamping system just here as well.
That will allow me then to wheel the machine around on these hard surfaces without any risk
of causing damage on the rear roller or the bottom blade because they're
lifted so clearly from the ground. The final big difference is the grass boxes that fit to these
two wonderful machines. This is the Westminster, on a greens mower the volume is not quite so
important now although these grass boxes are both 84 litres each I don't need to fill this
grass box full and the main reason for that is is because as this grass box gets heavier
of course it puts more weight on the front roller and actually changes the height of cut
so we always want to be very prudent about the amount of grass clippings that go into the
grass box on the Westminster especially if we're being very particular about our height of cut.
The Westminster grass box has a really nice handle and insert as well just here and notice
this doesn't have a grass box hoop on it but uses the tags which insert directly into the mower
and that saves a lot of weight because we don't need the grass box hoop but in particular you
need to see how close this grass box mates up to the cylinder so that everything that is picked up
and cut by the cylinder is discharged into the grass box- it's a really neat deal on this. The
more robust Buckingham; the grass box sits on this hoop which also protects the mower and the grass
box is less likely to be knocked off as well, 84 litres as well and that just very quickly and
easily because i'm more likely to be changing that more often with great amounts of grass
cutting just drops straight on and really easy to use. Both grass boxes are made of polypropylene
which means that it makes them very robust and I'm not going to worry about damaging those they'll
pop back up into shape there's no paint there's no steel to rust over time as well so they'll last
at least the lifetime of the mower. So to wrap up I hope that gives you a really good idea of
the differences so that it gives you the information you need to choose which mower
is the mower for you. Remember these machines are dedicated cylinder mowers this is all they do so
in the design everything's about the mowing. There's no compromise with these machines
having to accommodate different cartridges to be able to cultivate and brush they just mow and they
do it really really well. So no interchangeable cartridges on this system and remember with the
options with the general purpose Buckingham we can use the trailing seat behind both 20, 24 and
30 inch wide machine which saves your legs and allows you to cover much larger areas
for larger periods of time. You really can cut a lot of grass really well with this machine.
On the Westminster machine we have the wheel kit and stand so we can protect
the roller and the much more delicate bottom blade on this machine as well.
Because we might be in situations where we do sometimes get caught out with long grass
the front roller knocks down long grass and then doesn't present it to the bottom blade properly
and a cylinder mower is not good at mowing long grass short we have a wheel kit which replaces the
front roller on this machine as well just to give it added general purpose grass mowing abilities.
So I hope that answers all the questions thank you very much for watching
if you need any more information then please visit our other videos on our Allett YouTube channel
or visit our website on www.allett.co.uk