The Deleks 1.4 metre verge flail mower DVOLPE140 is it worth it?

We purchased the Deleks 1.4 metre verge flail for getting to those hard to reach areas. It cost us £3,589 which for a fairly comprehensive machine laced with multiple hydraulics systems seemed like a reasonable cost for me.

First impressions

When the machine arrived it was in two pieces, with the pantograph arm and hydraulics separate to the main body. Putting it together wasn’t overly difficult as it just meant you had to line up the two alignment holes and slam through some bolts. Make sure to lube them plenty as the hole can be a bit tight. Certainly on our case it required some hefty slaps with a large hammer.
Once the pins were in place, connect up the hydraulics lines and make sure they’re tight and you’re good to go.
The machine seems solid, it’s made up of thick steel plate, the hydraulics seem to be of reasonable quality and the paint job isn’t too bad.

What’s it like to use?

Ok, so up until you use it it seemed to be pretty good for the money. Attach it to the tractor and the problems arise:

1. The first problem lies with the hydraulics. There are two rams, one for tilting the head and one for extending the flail out on the pantograph. The ram for tilting the head has flow restrictors on it which means you can slow down the movement to make it more controllable. This is fine, however, the pantograph ram does not have these restrictors, this means that when used on our John Deere 2038R and John Deere 4066R as soon as you hit the switch to move the ram out it absolutely flies out making to difficult to control. So, we’d recommend adding a set of restrictions to this ram for better control
2. The second issue is with the head tilt ram. It unfortunately isn’t long enough to move the head from the ground position to the 90 degree vertical position. This means that if you want to go from mowing the verge to mowing the hedge it is impossible to do so without unhitching the flail and offsetting the two hitch links to their maximum to accommodate the 20 degrees or so that the ram can’t accommodate for because of its length (or lack thereof)

Outside of those two issues, it cuts well and seems to be good value for money. Unfortunately the second issue above makes it a poor buy in our opinion as this drastically cuts into job efficiency and therefore increases the time jobs can take which obviously leads to greater costs for the client