Skip to main content
Collection, Preservation and Display of Old Lawn Mowers

Ransomes Bobcat pedestrian mowers, what happened to them?

Enter a word or two to search the forum section and click the Search Forum button.

When I was a young single man, I worked at a government arms depot, I do remember it was in the 1980's and it rained nearly every single day until about May or June, when  I finally got to use a Stihl strimmer but others used Bobcats, there were three or four of them owned by the contractor I worked for. One came back from the winter service with the long wrap around the engine type exhaust extension pipe missing, a fitter had put a screw on silencer directly into the inlet threads next to the carb. we heard the tyres explode with the enormous heat generated by the very hot silencer transmitting its heat directly to the carb. which it was touching. The carb. engulfed in flames and neat fuel poured onto the tyres. Luckily the site had its own fire service and the machine was doused in foam and hauled away later. We weren't allowed to take matches, lighters, cigarettes, digital watches, radios etc. onto the site at all, dismissal would be the consequences.

I do remember the many railway lines all around the camp, long brown metal boxes would arrive by the trainload, we were told they'd come from the Argentinian war.

By the way, the Bobcats were used for mowing the grass on the 30 foot high grass 'humps' that housed the facilities for doing research on ammunition of all kinds, longest metal case I saw was about fifteen feet long.

Due to the fire incident, we were banned from entry into the magazines area for two weeks, just as the rain ceased and grass started to rocket in growth...we got so tired of playing cards etc. every single day, but we were paid.

villiers98 Wed, 10/03/2021

The zero turn ones with clutch for each wheel drive belt? Later sold as Textron Bobcat with Kawasaki engines .  Hard work to use with OPC levers added - earlier ones were better