So I am wondering - are Gator blades a style of blade OR a specific manufacturer?
Oregon designed and patented the Gator blade.
Naturally a lot of other blade makers and blade wholesalers stole the design and got them made in China for all the penny pinchers who will not pay anyone a fair price for their hard work.
Because Gators were the first on the market all tooted blades tend to be referred to as Gators.
Oregon makes Gators
XHT makes Predators
Stens markets Silver Streaks
Raptors & Chop Chops have no manufacturers name on them nor any part numbers so I guess they are another "make 1000 that look like this" from China.
Silver Streaks are a disaster as the end flute is too weak and breaks off leaving the blade unbalanced so after replacing them with real Gators and doing gratis spindle bearing replacements I no longer stock them.
Predators I II III & IV are distributed down here by Jackmax , I fell out with the rep so never had a chance to try them. However they look almost identical to Silver Streaks in flute design so it might have been for the better.
A few of my commercial customers run Gators so I only stock the blades they use.
My predecessor loved Gators and pushed them hard.
Most of the residential decks & spindles suffered greatly from using the Gators.
All of the 3 bolt AYP spindles have fractured, they just can't handle the extra forces the blades blades exert.
The older Murray decks ( pre MTD ) cracked & split every where and most of the pressed decks left clumps of grass on the customers lawn, probably too shallow.
Now there are a lot of variables in this sample but most have gone back to std blades and are getting better results and less deck / belt failures.
