Sensation Mowers

Welcome to the first and only Sensation Lawnmower website. This site is dedicated to the collection, restoration and use of this venerable mower.

Sensation Lawn Mowers was a commercial lawnmower brand created by Howard Phelps in 1944. The Sensation Lawn Mower Company was located in Ralston, Nebraska, USA. In 1966 the company was sold and relocated to North Omaha, Nebraska. In 1982 the Sensation Lawn Mower Company was purchased by Gilson Brothers which kept the brand name Sensation and married the products to what would be become a very distinctive orange and white color scheme. In 1988, Gilson was bought out by Lawn Boy, which was in turn acquired by Toro in 1989.

Read more about the history of the company on Wikipedia or the Sensation History page.

Rocco started the Sensation Yahoo! group in 2006 but messages were few and far between before Nate joined to share the story of his old Sensation in 2007. Membership on that site grew, and many Sensation users across the country joined to share information, images, and helpful how-tos. The group even counted among its members relatives of the founder of the company who shared many stories about the early years of Sensation design and production. In 2015, Rocco and Nate created this website for Sensation mowers with the goal of compiling information about these machines into an easier to navigate website. Sadly, after Yahoo! was purchased by Verizon they decided to shut down all of the groups in 2020.

Items of interest on this site:

  • Sensation Mower enthusiasts may be interested in refurb services for their treasured machines.

    The last Sensation branded mower was made in 1988 - if someone is selling what looks to be a "new" Sensation mower it very well may be a refurbished or NOS (new old stock) mower assembled by our very own Rocco.

  • Read (or add to!) the Sensation Projects section of the site.
  • The Forums are still young, but they provide a place where users can post questions about how to find parts or solve problems as well as buy, trade, or sell Sensation related equipment.
  • Sensation Manuals - User contributed original catalogs and manuals will be put in as good order as possible and posted here.
  • Gallery - users can upload images which will appear here. This is sort of a catch-all to make it easier to just upload stuff and have it appear someplace. These images do not show up on the main page, visitors will have to click on the gallery tab at the top of the page to view them.
  • Albums are different. It is assumed that you have a bunch of images you want to share, but are willing to include a story about them to explain them. These will show up on the main page. Albums require javascript to function.

Contact Us!

Now that Yahoo has terminated their Group messaging system the only way to contact us is through this website. You need an account on the system to use the Contact Form (this is also found as one of the tabs along the top of the page) or to post messages in the Forum (thats another tab up there). When you sign up it sends a message to us but you can't log in until someone approves the new account. This is a hobby site not a business so please be patient, it sometimes takes a day or two before we can get to it. Also, with all of the spammers and attackers sometimes these new user messages get lost in the mess - if you haven't heard back a day or so try again and we'll sort it out!