Over this past Spring, I inquired about a tiller for my father who is moving into his mid 70's. After looking at several smaller Troy-Bilt tillers and a new old stock Simplicity tiller, he finally settled on the Simplicity. The model is 516RT and is similar in most respects to the current model 7016RT. This tiller has a few more bells and whistles, such as 2 forward speeds (with a belt change) and it has covers over the sides of the tines, similar to the Horse model Troy-Bilt.

The dealer had two of these tillers and as it turned out, both had set so long with gas in the tanks, that the fuel intake and tank were loaded with crud and would not run. In as much as we are fairly good with a wrench, we negotiated with the dealer and bought both tillers at a much reduced price - with new tanks and that we'd get them going. After a few hours of elbow grease, we got both going. So far so good.

I have a Horse model Troy-Bilt and my Dad has a huge BCS tiller. He needed something smaller and easier to handle and I bought the second tiller mostly because I liked the looks of the thing and with the idea of having a back-up and something narrower for when the garden rows grow out. This tiller is 16" in width.

The tiller has a 5hp Briggs & Stratton engine. It starts and runs very smooth and rather quite. To engage the tines and forward movement, one lowers a lever to the handle bars. The wheels have a unique feature where they are locked by a piece of rectangular bar stock that fits into an open slot in the end of the wheel. To free wheel, the bar is pulled and rotated 90 degrees. Pretty slick and no pin/axle arrangement like some of the smaller Troybilt tillers. Reverse is accomplished by pulling a lever below the handle bars - very nice. One of the features that helps a light weight tiller like this (and it is very light compared to my TB or my Dad's BCS) is that the tine depth lever is a straight piece of bar stock, not unlike one would find on an older front tine tiller. This bar sets the depth, but it also DRAGS in the soil. Sort of an anchor, allowing one to till a little deeper without lurching forward. It also serves to bust-up the untilled dirt between the tines that lies below the shaft coming back to the tines. The tine shield flap on the back has a turned down lip of about 1.5 inches with 'V' shape cuts in it. This sort of rakes the dirt behind the tiller level and creates a "raked" look as the tiller moves along. The tiller has a large bumper on it too. The handle bars are adjustable, both vertical and from side to side.

All in all this is a nice machine for the $$$. Light weight, but with big tiller features - such as a gear drive tines vs chains. Due to the weight, very easy to handle. Very safe. Let go of the engagement lever and tines stop and forward/reverse motion stop. One is not going to bust-up untilled ground like a TB Horse or a large BCS, but once your garden is established, it can handle most all chores.

I see a LOT of TB tillers, but this is a very good tiller too. I would recommend it.

Happy gardening!

Bill