Mobile garden appliance with motor drive for tool and wheels

A mobile garden appliance including:

• wheels (14) movably supporting said appliance, tools (20), a motor (16) providing power for driving said wheels and operating said tools, and a traveling drive (28) interposed between said motor and said wheels;
• said appliance also including a controller for setting said traveling drive to operate said wheels at speeds that are a function of loading on said motor;
• said controller having an operating characteristic which causes driving speed of said wheels to decrease as loading of said motor increases and which causes driving speed of said wheels to increase as loading of said motor decreases;
• and
• under normal operating conditions loading of said motor, as a result of operating said tools, decreases as driving speed of said wheels decreases;
• said motor (16) including an output shaft (18) and said tools (20) being driven directly by the motor (16);
• said controller including a gear arranged between the motor shaft (18) and the traveling drive (28);
• said gear being a stepless gear constituted by a V-belt pulley gear that is of variable active diameter;
• said V-belt pulley gear including first and second pulley halves, one of the V-belt pulley halves (32;
• 58) being mounted in a rotationally secure fashion, and the other of the V-belt pulley halves (30;
• 62) being rotatable to a limited extent on the motor drive shaft (18) to achieve a load-dependent relative rotation of the V-belt pulley halves that acts against a spring (46;
• 72) effecting a change in diameter;
• said V-belt pulley halves having mutually facing annular end faces, and a ball self-closure (52, 54, 56) disposed between the annular end faces for spreading the pulleys upon relative rotation;
• and
• said mutually facing annular end faces (48, 50) of the belt pulley halves having ball races (52, 54) which rise in the circumferential direction and accommodate running balls (56).