Rack'Em Grass Catcher for Scag Lawn Mower with Advantage Deck

Video Transcript for Rackem Lawn Mower Grass Catcher Review and Installation

Adam: Hi everyone, Adam with etrailer.com. Today, we're going to be taking a look at the Rack'em Grass Catcher. Today we have the normal grass catcher and our extension here. So we're going to go ahead and mow some grass and catch some grass.So I just went ahead and trimmed the outside of this little field here, and I noticed a little bit of grass flying up, look down, and we do have a full carrier. So I'm going to go ahead and remove this, dump it and get back to work. I'm just going to grab my handle here, rotate it up and then pull it out.All right, so I just got done mowing this backfield and to be honest, I had to unload this a lot more often than I thought.

This is going to be the fifth dump. One thing I did notice is whenever it starts spewing out some of that grass, that's usually when it's full. As you can see here, I do have a lot of grass piled up. But just to show you guys, it's really easy to dump it, tilt it like this. And I have found it easier to actually take this door off.

So when our catcher has room to put all this dead grass, this is going to be our desired result. As you can tell, it's very clean looking and you're not going to spend a lot of time raking up all that dead grass, which is going to give you more time to enjoy your yard with friends and family.So with this attachment, obviously we are going to add a little bit of width to our mower. And at this widest part here, it is going to be about 20 and a half inches. We aren't going to really take away any of our ground clearance because the bottom of this will be even with the bottom of our deck. One thing to note, if you are on an incline and tilted right, we might have a little bit of contact with the ground here.

So just be mindful of that. And these measurements are going to be the same with all the types of grass catchers. The only thing different is we are going to have a different face plate, which is going to mount to your specific mower.So as you can see here, the face plate that we picked out for our Exmark, it definitely has a wide enough opening to where all that grass can flow in to this carrier. So our empty grass carrier here is going to be about 23 pounds. But when you buy the extension, this is going to be about 11 pounds.

Or if you buy the leaf catcher, this is going to be about nine pounds. So these accessories are going to come with all the bracketry needed. This one in particular did come with this clamp here to get that fastened down and it will utilize the original door. So you don't have to worry about finding a place to store your door, it will use the same exact hardware.And the leaf catcher is going to install the same way and will come with another bracket. But I am just going to use the one on our metal extension. So this grass catcher is going to allow you to gather all that grass clipping while you're mowing. So you're not going to be spending a lot of time picking up all that dead grass. So you have a lot more time to do other things around the house. Custom face plate will be able to fit any type of mower that you do have. In this case, I have an Exmark and we picked the right face plate and it bolts it up pretty easily. It is relatively lightweight, which makes it easy to unload it when it's full of that moist grass. It is made of stainless steel and aluminum, so it's going to last you a very long time.And to be honest, I really didn't see a difference in how this mower reacted when I'm driving it. I didn't really tell that I have more weight on the one side and it wasn't rattling around. All in all, I was actually pretty impressed on how it worked and how it allowed my mower to handle just as if I didn't have it installed. So whether you are mowing a back pasture, whether you're mowing the backyard or even a baseball field, this is definitely going to get the job done and give you a very clean look.So I just wanted to let you guys know that the trailer that I usually use to haul my mower around, I'm not going to be able to load it with my grass catcher installed. So just be sure that you have at least 20 and a half inches of extra space on one side on your trailer. And if you do, you should be good.So we pull our grass catcher out of the box, it's going to come as you see it here. We are going to have a little bar on the inside that we're going to get undone. This is going to come out like so, and we're going to end up mounting this to the top here. It does come with all the hardware. As you can notice, we do have our four holes here, which in the right orientation, this bar will line up very nicely. So we're going to use our included tool to fit in there. I am going to use a three eighth wrench up top for that lock nut. So once we get everything nice and tight, make sure everything is faceted down correctly.And then we can go ahead and install our face plate. To mount our face plate to our catcher here, we are going to have to go through the inside. And one thing I do suggest is just opening up this door and you can actually just remove it just so it doesn't slam down on your hands when you're in there. But once we do it, going to get that in there.So we're going to take our included hardware here and go through the four designated holes. And it's just going to be a bolt and a lock nut. So we we're having a little bit of issues getting this hardware through the holes, but I did solve it with a pair of vice grips. I just grabbed it like so, squeezed it together and then I was able to get that bolt through there. So another quick tip, we are going to get four bolts to fasten this faceplate to the catcher, but one is going to be shorter. One thing I did notice the hole down here is bigger than all the other ones and his head will be able to fit through that. So the shorter bolt will go on this hole here, just need to push this in a little bit and that should fall into place. And as you can see underneath, we've got plenty of room to put our nut on. So we are going to be using the same tools as before. So just go ahead and tighten those four down.So now we're going to go ahead and install this bracket and we're going to install it on one of these middle holes here. And what it's going to do is basically just slide over your deck like so, just so it's going to hang there. But we do want to make sure that we're not going to mount it to where it's going to cover this hole because we will be using that later. So I am going to use my half an inch wrench here for the inside lock nut, and I'm going to use a 14 millimeter socket for the outside.So as you can see, our bracket here is in between these two metal posts here, and we do have our other bracket going through our deck here and it's all lining up nice. We do have the hardware included. So I'm going to come down here and fish this through the top hole and we will have a nylon lock nut and it's going to be the same as these two over here. So once you get your grass catcher all hooked up properly, all we really need to do is put this door on and then we're ready to mow.Well, all in all, I would definitely recommend this to anybody doing even the smallest of mowing jobs. It keeps everything very clean and you get a better result with little, if not, no more effort whatsoever. Again, this was the Rack'em Grass Catcher and I'm Adam for etrailer.com..