Descripción
Is the Bad Boy 5055 tractor and 12-foot batwing cutter combination a good match — or is Bad Boy's marketing getting ahead of reality? I got a great letter from a viewer named Hank that opened up this whole can of worms, and it's a question I think a lot of people need to hear answered honestly before they spend their money.
Hank bush hogs 40 acres. He's been running a Kubota L4600 with a 6-foot cutter and heating up on hills after a few hours of mowing. His gut says he needs 60 to 75 horsepower. He noticed Bad Boy is pairing their 5055 tractor with a 12-foot flex-wing batwing cutter and wanted to know if that combination makes sense. Hank, I'm glad you asked — because there's a lot more to this story than the spec sheet tells you.
First, let's talk about the number that actually matters: PTO horsepower. Most manufacturers today advertise engine horsepower, and that's not the number that drives your rotary cutter. What matters is how much horsepower reaches the PTO shaft on the back of the tractor — and that number is always lower than the engine rating because of what's called parasitic loss. Your hydraulic pump, power steering, and other systems all bleed off horsepower between the engine and the PTO. On a hydrostatic tractor, that loss is even greater than on a gear drive. The Bad Boy 5055 is rated at 55 engine horsepower, but PTO output is in the mid-40s — and that's the number you have to work with when you're running a 12-foot batwing.
To Bad Boy's credit, they actually manufacture this cutter themselves in Batesville, Arkansas. They've built it with lighter stump jumpers and an 85-horsepower gearbox to reduce the horsepower requirement for a compact tractor. That's smart engineering. But here's where I have concerns — and I think Hank does too.
Before anyone buys this combination, I want you to honestly answer five questions. First, are you getting a cab with air conditioning? On a 90-degree day running that A/C full blast up and down hills, budget at least 6 to 10 horsepower just for that compressor. Second, are you getting a hydrostatic transmission? Hydros build heat on hard pulling days and lose more horsepower to the PTO than a gear drive — and if you're on hills with cab and hydro both working hard, that's a problem. Third, how steep are those slopes? More slope means more horsepower required — plain and simple. Fourth — and this is the one that keeps me up at night — can you stop going downhill? That cutter weighs right at 3,000 pounds. If you're on a slope with a little morning (or evening) dew on the grass, all that weight is pushing you from behind. A compact tractor doesn't have the frame weight and stopping power of a utility tractor, and that's a real safety concern. Fifth, what are you actually cutting? Mowing maintained grass takes far less horsepower than cutting sprouts up to two inches in diameter. I looked at Bad Boy's website and could not find a cutting capacity rating — no maximum diameter listed — and that concerns me. Most cutter manufacturers publish that number.
I'm not saying this combination is wrong for everyone. For flat ground, maintained grass, and a gear-drive tractor without cab and air — it could work fine. But if you've got hills, you're running cab and hydro, and you're cutting anything heavier than grass, I think you'd be much more comfortable in the 60 to 75 horsepower range Hank was already thinking about. His instincts are good.
If you've already bought this combination and are running it — especially on hills — please drop a comment below and tell us your experience. Hank and a lot of other buyers need to hear from real owners before they commit.
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