Crimson Tim
501 Club
I stumbled across a new (to me) strange device on my local Craigslist a few weeks back. It’s a lawn mower called Flymo, due to it being a mower that “flies”. At least hovers. Sort of. It has no wheels whatsoever, it is just supposed to float over the ground.
When I first saw this thing, I thought that sounded like the most dangerous thing since lawn darts! I want it!
Then I got to thinking about it…. What I can’t mow with the Cub is in and around and under roses in containers and beds and under an extensive post and rail fence line and some other typical detail work. That really would make life easier if I could maneuver a push mower in any direction instead of just forward and backward. Maybe this idea makes more sense than I originally gave it credit for?
Long story short, I don’t think anyone will be surprised that I like antique, oddball contraptions. Hence my presence on this site in the first place. The more I thought about this Flymo, the more interesting it seemed. Then I ended up with a couple extra bucks in my pocket, so it followed me home.
Flymo has been around actually for a long time (at least since the 70s, maybe 50s, I don’t remember what I originally found), though they never really caught on much in the US. They are very popular in the UK, however. They are still in business with an extensive product list of wheeled and hovering mowers, mostly electric these days. Turns out mine was built in 1981 according to the serial number, or 1978, according to what Flymo told me when I asked if they could supply any documentation. Husqvarna was importing these at the time.
The engine is a 2-stroke rated at 3.5 hp of Tecumseh design, though licensed to several other companies. Everything is lightweight. The deck is a plastic, but sturdy. The engine is aluminum. It doesn’t have centrifugal weights for a governor, it has a plastic vane the reacts to the speed of the airflow off the fins on the top of the engine. It’s not at all difficult just to pick up the whole thing to carry it around if necessary, or it will slide across the grass easily enough even when not running.
I have to admit, I have an old wood chipper with an 8.5 hp, 4 cycle Tecumseh engine, and now this Flymo with a 2 cycle Tecumseh engine, and my experience with these two really make me like them better than the typical Briggs or Koehler small engines I have typically worked with. They seem a little less lowest-common-denominator cheap, and a little more thoughtful in design and function. Too bad they went out of business!
This had apparently sat on a shelf at a mower service shop for 10 years. When it closed down, a service tech took it home with him in hopes of getting it going. Then he ran out of time and space, so decided to sell it. I’m not surprised the mower shop went out of business, because it didn’t take much to get it going. The guy told me it doesn’t have spark, even though he had had the flywheel off and been into the points. 10 seconds after I had the top cover off, at least part of the problem was obvious: the wire from the points to the coil was severed. Thanks to lurking here for years, I felt like I had a pretty good idea how things should look, and that wasn’t it. I re-gapped the points, put the flywheel back on and fixed the wire. The only other things I did to get it running doesn’t even amount to basic maintenance: clean the fuel system & carb, fab up a makeshift air filter and find a workaround for some missing fasteners. Now the little thing runs like a beast!
It has holes in the deck around the engine, and a centrifugal fan just above the cutting blades. So it draws air down past the engine (and the exhaust) under the deck to create the cushion of air to hover. In the fairly dense grass that it prefers, it really is surprisingly free of dust and chaff. However, if the grass is patchy and there is bare dirt exposed, yeah, it does create a *lot* of dust! Uneven ground and patchy grass also means it doesn’t hover so well.
It’s only rated at 3.5 hp, but it runs a lot stronger than the 6.5 hp B&S powered 4 cycle mower which is admittedly on its last legs. There’s a lot of irrigation used in the rose garden, so the grass gets pretty thick. I routinely stall out the B&S repeatedly trying to get through there. However, I can’t find vegetation thick enough to stall out the Flymo. It rarely even slows down. Actually, it really likes thick grass, as it hovers better that way. On bare pavement, it doesn’t really hover, but sort of skitters lightly over the surface. Once you get into grass, though, it does better. With nice, even ground and reasonably thick grass, it hovers about an inch above the soil. The cutting blade is recessed up higher in the skirt than a regular mower, so you are actually *less* likely to cut off a toe or mow over something you didn’t intend that a regular mower. I can mow over hoses and such with no issue.
Incidentally, you are supposed to adjust the cutting height by adding or removing spacers between the fan and the cutting blade.
So. How does it work? I like the engine a lot. It has a deceptive amount of power in a *very* lightweight package. As far as the overall cutting experience, it’s…. Fine. Because the blade is recessed so much under the skirt, it’s not a super aggressive cut. I sometimes have to go over super long weeds a couple of times before it will actually cut them. Not a lot worse than most push mowers, but a bit. Overall, I’d like it to cut a bit shorter, so if I can find a spacer or two that should improve that some.
Where the grass is thick but not too tall, the maneuverability is really very nice. It moves easily in any direction. Where the grass gets patchy or the ground uneven though, that starts to break down. Worst case, though, it slides on the grass pretty easily even when the engine is not running at all, especially when you pull it behind you.
Yes, it does make all the tight maneuvering between the roses easier.
And yes, it does make the fence line easier. The fence is perpendicular to a slight slope, so I find a can walk along the fence on the uphill side and drag the mower behind me. The slope will cause the mower to follow diagonally at an angle, thus getting under the fence. Then I can just pull it uphill a bit at each fence post and let it drift back downhill to get under the next section. So I can pretty much get under the whole fence just by walking a single pass instead of endless back and forth jockeying with a wheeled mower.
The down side is that the rougher ground and patchier grass around the barn is tougher to negotiate because it’s so lumpy the air cushion isn’t maintained as well. We have a horse farm, not a golf course, so it would do better here if it hovered with 50% to 100% more clearance.
That said, my plan is to use this for all small mowing duties from here on out, and have been doing so successfully for a couple weeks now.
Like with all of the unique old pieces of equipment, parts and documentation are very difficult to source. If anybody has any ideas for those, I would love to hear them. I have a couple of parts diagrams, but none of them match this model completely. I am in need of a couple of missing fasteners, and I’d like a real air filter, because I worry the one I cobbled together might not be 100% effective. And the kill switch doesn’t work yet.
Anyway, I thought you might enjoy this little bit of historical, out of the box thinking. Is it better? No, I can’t really say it’s better. It’s no worse. It’s just different. It has different strengths and weaknesses. I just like it because it’s weird!
When I first saw this thing, I thought that sounded like the most dangerous thing since lawn darts! I want it!
Then I got to thinking about it…. What I can’t mow with the Cub is in and around and under roses in containers and beds and under an extensive post and rail fence line and some other typical detail work. That really would make life easier if I could maneuver a push mower in any direction instead of just forward and backward. Maybe this idea makes more sense than I originally gave it credit for?
Long story short, I don’t think anyone will be surprised that I like antique, oddball contraptions. Hence my presence on this site in the first place. The more I thought about this Flymo, the more interesting it seemed. Then I ended up with a couple extra bucks in my pocket, so it followed me home.
Flymo has been around actually for a long time (at least since the 70s, maybe 50s, I don’t remember what I originally found), though they never really caught on much in the US. They are very popular in the UK, however. They are still in business with an extensive product list of wheeled and hovering mowers, mostly electric these days. Turns out mine was built in 1981 according to the serial number, or 1978, according to what Flymo told me when I asked if they could supply any documentation. Husqvarna was importing these at the time.
The engine is a 2-stroke rated at 3.5 hp of Tecumseh design, though licensed to several other companies. Everything is lightweight. The deck is a plastic, but sturdy. The engine is aluminum. It doesn’t have centrifugal weights for a governor, it has a plastic vane the reacts to the speed of the airflow off the fins on the top of the engine. It’s not at all difficult just to pick up the whole thing to carry it around if necessary, or it will slide across the grass easily enough even when not running.
I have to admit, I have an old wood chipper with an 8.5 hp, 4 cycle Tecumseh engine, and now this Flymo with a 2 cycle Tecumseh engine, and my experience with these two really make me like them better than the typical Briggs or Koehler small engines I have typically worked with. They seem a little less lowest-common-denominator cheap, and a little more thoughtful in design and function. Too bad they went out of business!
This had apparently sat on a shelf at a mower service shop for 10 years. When it closed down, a service tech took it home with him in hopes of getting it going. Then he ran out of time and space, so decided to sell it. I’m not surprised the mower shop went out of business, because it didn’t take much to get it going. The guy told me it doesn’t have spark, even though he had had the flywheel off and been into the points. 10 seconds after I had the top cover off, at least part of the problem was obvious: the wire from the points to the coil was severed. Thanks to lurking here for years, I felt like I had a pretty good idea how things should look, and that wasn’t it. I re-gapped the points, put the flywheel back on and fixed the wire. The only other things I did to get it running doesn’t even amount to basic maintenance: clean the fuel system & carb, fab up a makeshift air filter and find a workaround for some missing fasteners. Now the little thing runs like a beast!
It has holes in the deck around the engine, and a centrifugal fan just above the cutting blades. So it draws air down past the engine (and the exhaust) under the deck to create the cushion of air to hover. In the fairly dense grass that it prefers, it really is surprisingly free of dust and chaff. However, if the grass is patchy and there is bare dirt exposed, yeah, it does create a *lot* of dust! Uneven ground and patchy grass also means it doesn’t hover so well.
It’s only rated at 3.5 hp, but it runs a lot stronger than the 6.5 hp B&S powered 4 cycle mower which is admittedly on its last legs. There’s a lot of irrigation used in the rose garden, so the grass gets pretty thick. I routinely stall out the B&S repeatedly trying to get through there. However, I can’t find vegetation thick enough to stall out the Flymo. It rarely even slows down. Actually, it really likes thick grass, as it hovers better that way. On bare pavement, it doesn’t really hover, but sort of skitters lightly over the surface. Once you get into grass, though, it does better. With nice, even ground and reasonably thick grass, it hovers about an inch above the soil. The cutting blade is recessed up higher in the skirt than a regular mower, so you are actually *less* likely to cut off a toe or mow over something you didn’t intend that a regular mower. I can mow over hoses and such with no issue.
Incidentally, you are supposed to adjust the cutting height by adding or removing spacers between the fan and the cutting blade.
So. How does it work? I like the engine a lot. It has a deceptive amount of power in a *very* lightweight package. As far as the overall cutting experience, it’s…. Fine. Because the blade is recessed so much under the skirt, it’s not a super aggressive cut. I sometimes have to go over super long weeds a couple of times before it will actually cut them. Not a lot worse than most push mowers, but a bit. Overall, I’d like it to cut a bit shorter, so if I can find a spacer or two that should improve that some.
Where the grass is thick but not too tall, the maneuverability is really very nice. It moves easily in any direction. Where the grass gets patchy or the ground uneven though, that starts to break down. Worst case, though, it slides on the grass pretty easily even when the engine is not running at all, especially when you pull it behind you.
Yes, it does make all the tight maneuvering between the roses easier.
And yes, it does make the fence line easier. The fence is perpendicular to a slight slope, so I find a can walk along the fence on the uphill side and drag the mower behind me. The slope will cause the mower to follow diagonally at an angle, thus getting under the fence. Then I can just pull it uphill a bit at each fence post and let it drift back downhill to get under the next section. So I can pretty much get under the whole fence just by walking a single pass instead of endless back and forth jockeying with a wheeled mower.
The down side is that the rougher ground and patchier grass around the barn is tougher to negotiate because it’s so lumpy the air cushion isn’t maintained as well. We have a horse farm, not a golf course, so it would do better here if it hovered with 50% to 100% more clearance.
That said, my plan is to use this for all small mowing duties from here on out, and have been doing so successfully for a couple weeks now.
Like with all of the unique old pieces of equipment, parts and documentation are very difficult to source. If anybody has any ideas for those, I would love to hear them. I have a couple of parts diagrams, but none of them match this model completely. I am in need of a couple of missing fasteners, and I’d like a real air filter, because I worry the one I cobbled together might not be 100% effective. And the kill switch doesn’t work yet.
Anyway, I thought you might enjoy this little bit of historical, out of the box thinking. Is it better? No, I can’t really say it’s better. It’s no worse. It’s just different. It has different strengths and weaknesses. I just like it because it’s weird!
