Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)First, I should mention that I grew up running my dad's big Troy-Bilt forward rotating tine tiller. As a very young lad, I could handle the tiller with ease, and with only one hand on the handle. The tiller did all the work and needed very little human interaction. It served our family for 20 or 30 years. I have always been a great fan of Troy-Bilt tillers because of that experience, and that tiller will be a point of reference for this review.
Thinking the counter-rotating tine idea sounded like it would work well, I decided to try it in my garden. After a short time working with the new tiller, I decided that the "counter-rotating" should be changed to "counter-productive." I ran into two major drawbacks.
1) I found it almost impossible to keep the tiller headed in a straight line, even at a very shallow tilling depth. Because the tines work against the forward motion of the machine, any slight divot or furrow would send it off on a tangent, especially if the back end was hitting any hard dirt, causing the back end to bounce. Any time I would run onto an obstacle, such as a corn root from last year, the tiller wheels would dig in and the tines could not dig into or go past the root. I would have to lift the back end to get it to continue on. With a forward rotation, the tiller would just continue forward and perhaps lift itself over the root, but within a couple of passes it would chop it up, rather than getting stuck on it and sending the tiller on a curvy path. Even after a couple of passes, I found that I almost had to push the tiller to keep it moving in a forward direction.
2) I like to put organic material on the garden at the end of the season and till it in, such as the straw and manure from the chicken coop. With the CRT tines, the tines push this type of material forward and up rather than down and back, so soon the space between the shroud and the wheels is clogged, and the tires grab it as it is constantly pushed forward from the tines, so within about ten feet, the space between the frame and the wheels and the shroud and the wheels is clogged so tight with material that it won't hardly move, so I had to stop a couple times on every pass to unclog it.
Summary: This tiller is not meant for gardening. It took me at least four times as long to do anything with it than it should have, with inferior results. The inability to till in organic materials is a serious problem. The machine's inability to keep moving forward and in a straight line is very crippling to productivity. The counter rotating tines also seemed to transfer a lot more vibration to the operator. My hands were numb after running it for a while. I had no problem with the Honda motor or the power of the machine, which ran without a hitch (thus the two stars,) but it was just too hard to get anything done!
Thank goodness I bought it at Lowe's and they took it back!
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Troy-Bilt 21A645A766 Pro-Line 160cc Honda Engine Rear Tine TillerThe Pro-Line CRT features a premium 5 HP Honda engine and counter-rotating design to break up hard-packed soil quickly and easily. Small enough to fit easily between garden rows. U.S.A.
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