So far pleased with Rears sprayer

The other day I bought a used Rears 100 gal. PTO Pak Tank sprayer. Although I didn’t take a picture of it, this is what it looks like (except not as shiny new).

I’ve never seen a Rears sprayer first hand before this. I must say the quality seems very good. The tanks are painted stainless steel, as are any fittings. The diaphragm pumps seem very good quality. The sprayer I bought is probably 25 years old and still looks really good. The gun that came with it is also top notch (no comparison to the cheap wands which came with the other sprayers I own). I think these sprayers would pretty much last forever, if taken care of.

The other nice thing is that Rears doesn’t appear to change components very often at all. They are still using the same high quality pump today, they used 25 years ago. This makes things very nice to be able to get parts for the machine (it’s frustrating not to be able to get repair parts for a piece of used equipment).

Lastly, I spent probably 1/2 hour yesterday and a 1/2 hour this morning with the Rears rep. with technical questions. He was patient and knowledgeable. So they get a gold star, imo, for customer service, and I didn’t even buy the machine from them.

I plan to use this sprayer for herbicides under the trees. These sprayers are obviously more costly, but in this case, I think a person would be getting what they paid for.

Of course I have no affiliation with Rears, I’m just pretty impressed with this sprayer.

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Congratulations on the new sprayer! Rears makes awsome equipment and you are fortunate to locate a used Rears sprayer that suits your needs.

I use a 50 gal Rears airblast that I bought new about 10 years ago. Its a very well made and includes mechanical agitation. I added the electric control valves which makes it easy to turn one side of the sprayer off or on. This really helps when I remove or add apple trees a row at a time.

Well that’s ONLY 100 times bigger than mine :yum:

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Rick,

Can you explain more of this? I am intending to simply add a 1/4 turn SS ball valve to control the on/off for my spray boom (I plan to use it mostly for my herbicide spray boom vs. using the wand it came with). That’s the way my airblast sprayer is set up. I have 1/4 turn valves for each side of the sprayer on the airblast and can easily shut them on and off from the tractor seat when I have skips in the rows. I thought I’d do the same system with the herbicide sprayer, but it would just take one 1/4 turn valve. Is there any advantage using electric control valves vs. 1/4 turn valves?

I have been using a 25 gal. electric sprayer for herbicides, but I have to fill it up so many times it really wastes a lot of time. I thought w/ this hundred gallon sprayer, it might save me some fill ups. For the electric sprayer, I installed a little electric toggle switch by the tractor seat to shut the sprayer off. This rears sprayer also has mechanical agitation, which my 25 gal. electric sprayer lacks.

I ended up ordering a new drive line for this Rears sprayer. The one which came with it is too short for my tractor. Also ordered some hose and some odds and ends which totaled a little over $300. I’m hoping the pump is good. The guy who had it before me left water in the pump in an unheated barn, so it’s a question whether the pump is good or not. I don’t see any visible cracks. The air chamber is still pressurized and when I drained the oil, I didn’t see any water in it. That seemed like a good sign to me, and the Rears rep agreed.

Gee, I’m a junior member of the rears club as Olpea knows. Bought my first Rears estate sprayer over 20 years ago and still have it, but bought the same model again so now I have two, just in case one stops working at a crucial period.

A 25 gallon stainless steel tank with a belt driven paddle wheel for agitation mounted on a frame with bicycle wheels.

Both sprayers were a bargain at around 12 hundred but now they are over double that, even though this kind of equipment hasn’t generally gone up that much. The repair shop supervisor at OESCO says Rear’s prices took a huge jump when the company was bought out a few years ago.

The same man also says my little sprayer is very popular on small organic farms in the region because the paddle wheel is about the only way to keep Surround well mixed. Jet agitation just don’t do it.

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Don’t believe the electric valve offers any advantage over the 1/4 turn valve on a herbicide sprayer. Its an expensive option but it works great on my AB sprayer when I need to turn each side of the sprayer on and off a lot. The standard remote control valve on the Rears AB is a little clunky. Its a lot easier to flip a couple of toggle switches dozens of times rather than turning a valve for each side on and off dozens of times.

I still use a plastic 25 gal herbicide sprayer with a 12 Vdc pump and switch. Fortunately, I just have a small area to spray so it works ok. When the pump fails every few years I just throw it out and but another one for $60.

Hope your pump is OK.

Chemical Containers in Florida stocks a lot of replacement parts for Rears sprayers. I believe they were suggested by Rears when I called about some spare parts a few years ago.

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Interesting. The guy I talked to had the last name of Rear (one of the owners) and told me Rears was a generational family business. Perhaps they sold a portion of the business?

I just did a search and it is a privately held company with no record of changing hands I can find. I assume you were talking with the man on the phone from Oregon and guessing he has the facts. I’m not sure how mine were twisted- it occurred when I was asking why the price for my sprayer seemed to have doubled overnight. Perhaps he was providing his version of customer relations. Or perhaps, somehow, one of us misunderstood the other.

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