EARTHQUAKE Victory Rear Tine Tiller, Powerful 209cc 4-Cycle Viper Engine, Rugged Bronze Gear Transmission, Counter-Rotating Tines, Instant Reverse, Pneumatic Wheels, Model: 39381, Red/Black

I searched for a beast and got an EARTHQUAKE! Opened the box, followed the instruction manual to assemble it which was easy. Added oil and gasoline. I set the tines high and started tilling. It was a monster and dug through red clay mixed with huge pieces of gravel under sod that had been settled ground over the past 6 years. I tilled at 2 inch depth and made several sweeps and it worked just as described and covered a large area in about 15 minutes and got about 6 inches deep. Very happy with my first time using it and hope to get many years (5 year warranty) of service. All steel and feels to be well made. Easy to maneuver and handles very well. Powerful! Heavy but necessary for tough jobs!

OK, so its a name brand you might not be familiar with... i wasn't, turns out they are made in Minnesota or something... basically southern Canada. Anyhow its strong like bull, small tree roots? ha! it laughs at them... sprinkler system you didn't know was installed? Diced like a tomato on JVC! A family of burrowing rodents? SHREDDED! I have admittedly pretty soft soil to begin with it being mostly alluvial sands that are amazing to garden in and why we bought this property. However i wanted to put in a solid half-acre garden and by the time you rent a tiller for a few days that might not have been taken care of, then use and return it you might as well have purchased your own. I have a lot of experience with tillers and market gardening even big-time farming. This is easily my favorite tiller that i have used and i have used some big boys like the BCS series. A pro tip: You dont need to slam the reverse lever up, you just need to let go of the go bar, then smoothly and gently raise the reverse lever until it kicks into reverse then just let go when you are backed up to where you want to be. The only thing i don't like is that there is no neutral drive gear for the tine motion. if the critter is moving... its tines are moving. you can slip the cotter pins so the wheels don't rotate with the tines and then just push it wherever you want it to go. Screw that, raise the tines up to the highest they go, tilt her forward a bit and drive the beast to where you want to till. Remember: Tilling takes everything on top and forces it to the bottom. so on pass one, it will bury the stuff on top... pass 2 will bring it back up... pass 3 bury/mix, pass 4 bring it back up ETC so remember to put your adjuncts like fertilizer or whatever you want tilled and mixed into your soil on your LAST ODD NUMBER PASS.Other uses for the tiller i have found: It makes trenching a breeze! Just till the line you want to trench out, scoop out the now super soft dirt... bam ready to lay irrigation.. or fix the irrigation you destroyed tilling!All parts of the tiller that could be damaged by the weather or leaving it outside in the rain can easily be covered with a small trash bag, open the trash bag, put it over the head, pull the strings tight around the base and tie it off. good to go! Don't let the weather ruin your tiller and i see this thing lasting at least a decade of hard use... and i use it HARD. Also, this unit REALLY likes ethanol free gas.

As a former owner of an original TroyBuilt Horse from many years ago before they were bought out, this tiller for the money is pretty impressive. In comparison, the horse did not have counter rotating tines so you had to be careful in hard ground or it would buck and run away on you. Back in the day, people actually raced the TroyBuilt tillers using that very feature. The Earthquake just sits where it is digging and digs as it moves along as it pulverizes the soil. It has to be nudged manually a little in hard soil but it does not jump out of the furrow like the horse did. The earthquake does not have a high speed transport gear and you have to pull the pins on the wheels to move it around without the engine running. The tines cannot be disengaged during transport where the horse had gear levels for the tines, a high transport speed and a neutral which is free wheeling. The horse was also a lot heavier. Digging wise, the Earthquake rivals the horse though not as fast. A new horse will cost you several times the price of this machine. For the price I am very happy with it and glad I bought it. It works well in my high tunnel where I till only the growing rows for planting and leave the walkways untilled. There were reviews saying it was hard to assemble. I was able to put it together on without help following the step by step instructions. I have to admit they are not the best instructions but there was enough information to figure out how to assemble it with minimal guessing. Also pays to look at the parts breakdown to see how the parts are supposed to fit.

The first rock it picked up the drive belt snapped. Called customer support who notified me that I should have adjusted the belt tension when I received the tiller. Then told me it would be July before they could get me a new belt. By July I won’t need a tiller. The representative advised me to go to “Partswarehouse” to order a new be costing $65 with shipping for a 12” drive belt. My problems with this company are Why did they not have a belt for their own machine? Why should I have to adjust a belt right from the factory? It would be like buying a new car and having to adjust the brakes and do an alignment prior to driving it the first time. I will NOT buy another one of these machines. Poor customer service and my guess is that this is a defect in the machine itself and why they are back ordered on belts. Update .. put belt on tilled for about twenty minutes when the forward cable broke. They did send me a new cable at no charge and very quickly. I finished tilling and when I tried to shut it down the on off switch did not work. I have literally spent more time fixing this machine than I have tilling with it.Update: have owned the tiller over a year and have replaced three belts at $60 a pops forward cable and replaced a tire at$100 because the rim is so cheap that when I tried to replace the tube it bent using a screwdriver to pry up the tire. Cheap piece of crap and expensive to fix.