Snapper xd 82v blade speed

[Kmac]

I had been considering a battery powered mower for some time and my wife surprised me with a snapper xd for Christmas. When mowing season came around I noticed there was two problems with its design. The snapper xd has "load sensing" and adjusts the blade speed based on the thickness of your grass. Heres the problem. I have fescue and my Honda gas powered mower does two things that are huge advantages for my yard. The Honda appears create a vacuum and cut the grass blades even and more importantly picks up and mulches the pinestraw and pinecones from the many trees I have in my yard. When I mow my xd the yard does not look great because it leaves all the debrie(unmulched) from the pine trees. The snapper xd does OK job when load sensing had the blade speed turned up. Here are some things I have considered.
1. I have ordered what appears to be their mulching blade. I haven't received it yet and don't have much hope it will make a difference. I have a feeling spent money on a replacement blade that will not change the behavior of the mower.
2. Modify an existing 21 inch mulching blade for a different model to create a load on the motor.
3. Figure out someway to trick the mower to think it is in thick grass.

All suggestions welcomed.

 

[MowerMike]

I have a Greenworks 60 volt 21” deck mower with a heavy duty blade that does exactly what you are saying. As soon as the mower senses any load, it kicks into high speed mode and stays there even when the load is removed. The blade has chevron shaped detents, so if your blade is like that, then it should work. Note that it will drain your batteries much faster than the standard blade. You can buy it on the Greenworks Ordertree website (greenworks dot ordertree dot com) with the part number 2908902, although it is currently out of stock.

 

[dougmacm]

I have a Greenworks 60 volt 21” deck mower with a heavy duty blade that does exactly what you are saying. As soon as the mower senses any load, it kicks into high speed mode and stays there even when the load is removed. The blade has chevron shaped detents, so if your blade is like that, then it should work. Note that it will drain your batteries much faster than the standard blade. You can buy it on the Greenworks Ordertree website (greenworks dot ordertree dot com) with the part number 2908902, although it is currently out of stock.

Not only does it say "Out of Stock" it also says "No Longer Available".

Thank's to Mikes original post about this "unicorn" blade, I bought one to try out on my Greenworks 40V Self Propelled mower. It ran at the high 3200 RPM the whole time and quickly depleted the 4Ah battery in around 14 minutes (lasts twice as long with normal blade). Did not like the short run time, nor did the batteries as they were too warm to put on the charger right away so this was a one & done experiment on this mower.

I recently bought a Kobalt 80V Self Propelled mower and have ran this HD blade on it the past two weeks ... this blade is a much better match for 80V than it is for 40V.

Both weeks I bagged ...

Last week the grass was not too long in that it ran at the normal 2800 RPM and never kicked up to high speed however it did deplete the battery faster.

This week grass was really long and thick and mower kicked in & out of high speed mode.
The first 6Ah battery lasted 27.6 minutes (HYG Generic battery) and the Genuine Kobalt 6Ah went in 2nd and lasted 33.6 minutes. The HYG was fully recharged by the time the Kobalt decided it was done so the HYG went back in and had 2 bars left (1/2 charge) after the final 11 minutes.
Kobalt claims their 6Ah battery should take 180 minutes to charge, so it is hard to believe this HYG battery is a true 6Ah as I'd guess it was fully re-charged in about an hour. Based on the run time's I recorded, the HYG lasted 82% of the Kobalt which would be closer to 5Ah if conditions were identical which is really hard to say. Definitely similar grass length & thickness, but it does vary throughout my yard.
Filled 15 bags ... about 1.86 bushels / 20 lbs. each ... in about 1 hour 11 minutes total run time.

YES ... this blade cuts & bags better than the standard blade and it will be a bummer if GW had really discontinued it.

Maybe I'll be able to mulch with this blade next week as see how that goes.

Doug

 

[Mower King]

I had been considering a battery powered mower for some time and my wife surprised me with a snapper xd for Christmas. When mowing season came around I noticed there was two problems with its design. The snapper xd has "load sensing" and adjusts the blade speed based on the thickness of your grass. Heres the problem. I have fescue and my Honda gas powered mower does two things that are huge advantages for my yard. The Honda appears create a vacuum and cut the grass blades even and more importantly picks up and mulches the pinestraw and pinecones from the many trees I have in my yard. When I mow my xd the yard does not look great because it leaves all the debrie(unmulched) from the pine trees. The snapper xd does OK job when load sensing had the blade speed turned up. Here are some things I have considered.
1. I have ordered what appears to be their mulching blade. I haven't received it yet and don't have much hope it will make a difference. I have a feeling spent money on a replacement blade that will not change the behavior of the mower.
2. Modify an existing 21 inch mulching blade for a different model to create a load on the motor.
3. Figure out someway to trick the mower to think it is in thick grass.

All suggestions welcomed.

Lets just face it....elec mowers are not going to cut like a gas powered mower, TOO MUCH of a power difference. So, if you're going the elec route, you're going to have to deal with the cut it provides!

 

[MowerMike]

Not only does it say "Out of Stock" it also says "No Longer Available".

Funny thing is that there are also items that are listed as "In Stock" with the green "ADD TO CART" button highlighted, that also have the "No Longer Available" banner beneath them. For example: https://greenworks.ordertree.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=36305847

 

[dougmacm]

Funny thing is that there are also items that are listed as "In Stock" with the green "ADD TO CART" button highlighted, that also have the "No Longer Available" banner beneath them. For example: https://greenworks.ordertree.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=36305847

Well that's a good sign then that the unicorn may ride again !!

I'll keep an eye on it as I'd like to buy 1 or 2 more of them and post in this or the other thread if you see they are back in stock.

Thanks,

Doug

 

[MowerMike]

With all this COVID-19 and China trade war stuff going on right now, it may be a long wait before the unicorn blade is once again a reality.

 

[Kmac]

Thanks for all the advice.
Regarding blade on the snapper: it does have the chevron shapped detents so I am pretty sure our unicorn blade would work.

Prior to posting I looked at the parts manual( https://www.snapper.com/na/en_us/pr....downloadmanual.1687884-00_IPLURL_LO.pdf.html) and noticed they had an optional mulching blade. I had already ordered this prior to my original post, however the arrival time is Aug 24th. I'll report back on the performance of the blade.

I am personally not concerned with battery life. My yard take about 30 min of run time and typically and and the battery has plenty of remaining power when I am done. Since I have two batteries, I should be fine for now.

 

[dougmacm]

You got my curiosity up so I searched for that 84004556 Mulching Blade and looks like it can be had for $19.01 on Snapper's site.

Post a side by side picture of it and the standard blade when you get it. My guess is the blades are the same as the Std. & HD GW blades unless Snapper engineered (or had GW engineer) something special.

Ran the GW-HD Blade at level 4 (2-5/8" cut) on Friday and Mulched this time ... really did a nice job. It jumped up to high speed a bunch of times where it was longer & thicker but not near as often as it did last week bagging at level 3 (2-1/8" cut).

Like last week, I started with the generic 6Ah battery and it lasted 37:40 minutes (4 minutes or 12% longer than last week) then ran the Kobalt 6Ah for the remaining 28 minutes and it had 3 of 4 bars remaining on the mower and 2 bars of 3 on the battery @ 77.3V.

Doug

 

[dougmacm]

As it's been a couple of weeks ... did you get the MULCHING BLADE yet and if so did you get a chance to test it out ??

Thanks,

Doug