Hello I'd like to introduce you to the Allett Buckingham Range of lawn mowers.
My name's Austin Jarrett and today this mower I've got to tell you is the top-level mower
that we produce for our homeowner range. This product has a really huge heritage.
This product was previously known as the Atco Royale and we purchased the design rights of this
product back in 2011 and have been making it ever since. It has a really strong heritage and there
are thousands of these machines mowing brilliant lawns all over the world. The reason that they've
been so popular is this is really what it is a traditional cylinder mower. They're heavy, robust,
accurate, easy to use and this Buckingham Range as we now call it under the Allett banner is
really a very classic machine, they're very hard working we call them semi-professional because
if you're in a club you're going to get a lot of accuracy and the long life out of these products.
They're heavy that means they're strong they're accurate again when it comes to setting bottom
blades and cylinders but the heaviness means that we produce very strong striping and those strong
stripes last longer because of the weight of the machine. There are three models in the range;
for the smaller of the large lawns there is a 20-inch model that's where we start,
24 inch, and this very large 30-inch-wide machine for the very largest lawn.
The grass box capacities on these machines again are much larger than on our normal homeowner
machines. We start with 84 litres, 96 litres, and a massive 118 litres on this big machine.
And the weight of course I've talked about that as being a major part of the striping ability of
these machines but again even this small machine is 103 kilos, 111 kilos, and 135 kilos. You need
to make sure that you have full access to all your lawn areas and sort ramps out because there's no
picking any of these machines up the steps. We recommend and give as a guideline for the machines
and the lawns that you should be using them on- on the smaller machine here; up to 450 square meters,
this 24 inch machine up to 650 meters, and this one takes over from 650 meters up to
1500 meters but to be perfectly honest with the trailing seat behind there's no fatigue
and the machine is so quick that you can take on lawns much larger than that quite easily.
If we just very quickly run through this 24-inch machine just to give you an
idea of the features that we have in this. We start of course at the front with the grass box
and this is a polypropylene grass box and that's really robust you're not going to break that
by bumping into any rockery you're not going to scratch the paint off it and because it's plastic
it sits on the front of the machine and doesn't drum like the old grass boxes used to. The grass
box is supported on this cradle and that folds up neatly to reduce the footprint for storage.
At the very front here we've got the roller the roller contributes towards the strong striping
that you get from an Allett mower but its most important function of course is for height of
cut control and we adjust the position of this front roller for the height of cut.
The height of cut on this range is really wide and it goes from as low as five millimetres low
to 35 millimetres high and that that is quite an extraordinary range to have within
one cylinder mower. The height of cut is changed just by using a spanner to loosen off two screws
and then i have a knob at the side here with a gear on and I'm able to just rotate that
in order to find my correct position for the height of cut that I want.
What I love about this machine is the rake. The rake fits just behind the front roller
and that helps just comb the grass that stands grasses upright including those low-lying flat
weed leaves combs and presents them to the bottom blade ready for cutting much better
than if that comb wasn't there at all. That again is fully adjustable on these two screws
so I can be as aggressive or I can lift it out as much as I want to get the result that I need.
The cutting business of course is what makes the cylinder mower so much more superior in the way
that it cuts. Why do they use them on golf greens? It's because of the quality of cut and of course
you've got to do the good old paper test on this in order to illustrate how these work.
The bottom blade on this machine is extremely robust and that's always great as well if
we're mowing sticks maybe even stones but I wouldn't recommend it but it does mean
that this extra strong bottom blade means it's much less likely to go out of cut.
A neat feature on this product is a little stand and I can just by pulling this little knob out
it drops the stand down. When I put the machine down then the roller is clear ready for me to do
the adjustment. The cutting end of this machine of course is about the cylinder and the bottom blade.
What makes these mowers different from a rotary mower is this ability to be able to cut like
scissors, that absolutely clean cut which just ensures the healthiest plants that you can get.
As this cylinder rotates it's giving 73 clips in every metre so that's not highly intense and it is
a general purpose type clip rate if you're wanting to mow really at the bottom end of the mowing
height on this then take a look at the Westminster machine which is essentially a similar chassis
just with much higher clip rate because it has 12 blades instead of six- it's double the clip rate.
These machines work hard and they're expected to work hard for a long time which is why we make the
obvious choice of fitting the Honda engine this is the GX200 engine and that's fitted on all three
models; that's 196 CC, runs on an unleaded fuel, and has a fuel tank with a 3.1 litre
capacity. The machines we love them because of their easy starting;
switch on, choke on, fuel on, give it a little bit of revs and it starts first time every time.
If we spin the machines around you get to see the rear rollers and the rear rollers
of course are just so important from the striping point of view.
The rear rollers are steel, bearings and each one has got a split in; this is a two section
in both the 20 and 24 and then for the really wide machine we go to a triple section
split. They're all steel and we also have rubber bonded coatings with traction grips.
The traction grip means that it gives it a fantastic ability to
hill climb but in particular we have an optional extra for this machine called the trailing seat
and the trailing seat you sit on, it steers behind the mower and we need to have great
traction from the rear roller because it is pulling a heavy operator along behind it.
We go for two sections on 20 and 24 and the reason we do that is because it helps with straight
lining to be able to steer the mower and when we turn at the end we don't want to be scuffing the
turf, and when we go to the much wider 30 inch splitting in the middle is still just not going
to be good enough and we split that into three section and that's got a full differential drive.
That's not so easy to design and construct but at Allett we consider it to be such an important part
of the beautiful mowing that we achieve. From the control centre the handlebars
of this machine I have height adjustable so I can undo this knob here and it gives me a range to
make that more comfortable depending on the height of the operator but also it's quite important when
you're on the trailing seat to be able to adjust that height to the to the optimum position.
The bail bars and the control of the machine I have a little two-stage
safety lever which i need to move forward and then lift the bale bars to engage
the mower. If I want it with or without cylinder I just have a little control here
pull that out and when I engage the bale bar then that engages both rear roller or cylinder
and if I don't want the cylinder driving because I'm going to be driving over gravel
then I need to be able to disengage the cylinder and make sure there's no damage going to occur
to the cutting area. There are two optional extras for the Buckingham machines; the first one is the
auto-steer seat which is a real fantastic addition. These machines are quite quick
difficult to keep up with and if you have a large area then sitting down and allowing the machine to
run at full speed is obviously a big advantage and allows me to cover the ground more quickly.
This machine's so well designed it hitches to the machine in just a matter of seconds; the roller
actually steers so the seat follows the mower all the time so even when you're going around a flower
bed the rear roller doesn't drop off the edge it follows the mower around the outside- really
clever design and definitely an option well worth looking at and they fit to each of these machines
but when you're ordering it make sure you specify the width of the machine that you need this for.
This trailing seat with these large Honda engines on these machines will pull the training seat and
the operator up 20-degree slopes so be careful but it really is able to go to most good lawn areas.
The second option is when you have trouble with longer grass you've been away you've
come back and you need to mow the long grass you can remove the front roller and just put
this wheel kit on so you don't lay the grass down before the cylinder comes to mow it; so that is a
useful option extra that's for the 30 inch machine again but it is available for all three models.
So, thanks very much for watching I hope that this video has been useful to you but please
remember the Buckingham range- absolutely the king of the homeowner mower range, really
strong long-lasting stripes and a machine that is going to be accurate and lasts a very long time
if you need more information please visit our website at www.allett.co.uk