Thread: Small Tillers?
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Old March 2, 2015   #29
Irv Wiseguy
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Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Thousand Oaks, CA
Posts: 281
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I have a Mantis tiller and it's ok, but if I were to start over again I'd get something bigger. My unworked soil is rocky and when tilling a new patch (which I'll be doing this year to plant sweet potatoes for the first time) the rocks easily gets caught in the tines and stalls the engine. I don't know if a larger tiller would handle rocks better or not, but it hardly seems worth it to have to stop every few seconds and remove the tines to get a rock unstuck.

The other thing I really don't like about it is you have to remove the transmission cover before every few uses and add grease. They use a #0 grease which I have difficulty finding locally so I end up buying over-priced grease from Mantis directly. I assume there is similar maintenance that has to be done with larger tillers too, though. I am also not a fan of needing to mix oil and gas; never sure if I'm adding in the correct ratio (don't have enough fingers to do that math!).

Irv
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