While many of you may have never seen one or perhaps have completely forgotten about their existence, hovering lawnmowers are a thing and they have been for about 50 years! Using the aerodynamic properties of a fan spinning with the blade under the body of the machine and a pluggy little two-stroke engine in this case the Flymo works like a dream. In fact, the Flymo name is still on the market today. You are going to see a 1965 Toro Flymo hovering lawn mower get repaired and restored in this video. Frankly, it is awesome.
You can still buy this style of lawnmower today, believe it or not. They are not cheap but they are out there and they’re available in both piston engine and electric motor designs.
How does it work? You are going to get to see the guts of the whole thing in the video but the fan that sits above the cutting blade draws air down into the “cutting chamber” below the engine and that same fan forces the air outward against the body of the mower. That’s where it is forced downward and creates the lift to force the mower to hover above the ground.
The simple and smart design persists today and while that’s cool, examples fro 1965 are way freaking cooler than the stuff made in 2020 as they always seem to be! Enjoy this restoration.
How is your small engine restoration going Brian, when are we going to see it fire up?
Classmates down the street in 1973 had one of these. There backyard was a steep ravine. We used to tie a rope to the lawnmower and drop it down the slope. Then we would pull it back up the hill in a big pendulum motion. Used to do a pretty decent job.
do you know how many people have lost some of their toes since this invention……
We had one back in the early 1980s, our yard was all steep hills so we tied a rope to it and it would glide down the hills and you simply pulled it back up.