Earthquake® 33970 Victory™ Rear Tine Tiller, Powerful 212cc 4-Cycle Viper™ Engine

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!

Unit arrived about a month after I ordered it. Amazon showed unavailable for many weeks before I was notified units were available. According to their brochure, the unit is manufactured in China. The retailer is based in Wisconsin and apparently had something to do with the design of the unit. It's Cardboard box had a big hole in it from abusive handling by shipping company. Fortunately nothing was damaged. Assembly will go easier with a friend to hold the parts in place while you place and tighten the bolts. Since the unit arrived in the fall, I was only able to till my garden patch one time. Tilling went according to their video. Nice fluffy soil after tilling and it tolerated a few fist sized rocks. I think the tines, transmission, and sheet metal parts are extra thick. The engine has a gas shutoff. When you are through tilling, shut off the gas shut off lever (located near the choke lever) and let the engine stop on it's own, thereby draining any gas from the carb. This is the second predator engine and both start easy after storage if you follow this advice. The only reason for not awarding five stars is I have had only limited time to use it unit. So far, very happy.

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.

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.

Very powerful machine. Able do all I wanted . Worth the money

This thing has some power. I’m in southwest Va and or soil. Is either hard red clay or rocks, or red clay with rocks. This tiller will chew right through the hardest red clay and just spit out the rocks. Big pick up with two hands type of rocks. I left the side guards off so the tiller could toss the rocks out the side instead of them being trapped and the tiller repeatedly hitting it large rock and stalling out. I would definitely buy this again. Can’t beat this for the the money.