Since the grass is also heavier than normal and tends to be very puffy, the cutting units must have a greater physical weight in order to follow the contours of the fairway and provide an even cut. The major durability concerns in the design of the vehicle were the hydraulic pump drives and the reel motor drives. This mower was the first to be equipped by Jacobsen with polychain belts. Hydraulic pressure spikes, which could cause premature belt failure, were a special concern. Polychain drives are quieter than geared drives which are normally used on fairway mowers and don't require oil lubrication which eliminates the possibility of oil leaking onto the grass.
Polychain drives are also more economical.
The main testing focus on this mower was determining reel speed, pressure, horsepower requirements, operating temperatures, and frame stress of members under varying duty cycles. In the past, data acquisition for development projects of this type was accomplished by instrumenting a prototype with a single-channel miniature data logging device. Most turf equipment testing requires multiple channel acquisition in order to track the effects of important events throughout the various systems. Using a one channel device made it necessary to attempt to repeat events several times each time connecting the logger to a different sensor. This took large amounts of time and detracted from accuracy since once a swath was cut it couldn't be repeated and no two swaths were exactly alike.