At home here we gave our front lawn (120sq yds-ish) a sorting with a late 1980s Atco electric lawn raker last weekend. It is a machine that was based on the then Qualcast RE35DL mower with a drum of spring combs in lieu of the cutting cylinder. I usually go over the lawn at this time of year in 4 directions collecting the rakings in the machine box and then tipping onto a sheet to cart it away...and then vacuum up any bits left loose with a rotary mower.. I gave our old Wolf E30 Cub a run out for this job.
Then a day later I mowed the lawn with the regular mower which is a 1969 Atco 14" battery cylinder mower....and then hand broadcast on some granular fertiliser...nothing too fierce just a light general feed up.
The plan was mainly to remove the dead thatch of a long cold Winter...there is a bit of moss but in the shade of the fence side but the grass usually beats this once growing well.
The raker is such that it could be used for a light single pass at any time in the growing season just to lift the grasses that tend to sprawl flat to give that lovely upright fresh growth again once mown.
At work we have a 1995 Hayterette 5hp rotary mower, the version with solid cutterbar rather than disc and swinging blade, and this has a commercially made thatcher blade fitted...it has 2 replaceable sprung tines that bolt to the end..this can do a fiercer job than our home lawn raker so has to be adjusted down with care. Between passes over the lawn we rake up with Chelwood plastic tine lawn rakes..and finally again a vacuum up with a rotary mower. The thatcher bar is sold by some of the pattern spare parts companies and can fit other machines but is the sort of thing that would load up and damage the wrong machine...and would definitely invalidate any new machine warranty.....
We then have a rotavator that has a set of spiking tines on that we run over the lawn to help aeration.
My only dealing with petrol powered tined scarifiers was back in the early 1980s with a commercial petrol machine and later a domestic petrol scarifier. The first had a line of fixed metal tines spaced around a shaft... it was great when the tines were fresh and new as they presented a good pointed edge to lift out lawn debris but wore down quickly in hire use getting set perhaps too low? and once the tine point had gone it got set even lower to achieve a result, in time labouring up the machine..causing even more wear. Really I feel it was a specific site machine where it would be great maintaining some greens..but was getting hammered in hire use..each user wanting to maximise use of it once hired.!!
The domestic machine was similar but with more flail like tines I seem to recall.?...again perhaps best as a one user machine rather than hiring it out.
I stress that this is a historical reference....and I'm not up to speed on current hire machines. But anyway these tined machines do do a bigger job than any sprung tine machines.
The other thing being that moss is there often due to damp shaded conditions and it is only removal of these conditions that really cure the job.
It would perhaps be possible to treat the lawn with a moss killer and then leave a while before scarifying out.??...but this is not something I have any experience of.
At work our large main lawns have plenty of moss this year...but once the grass gets underway it usually beats the grass to give a reasonable effect ..so we concentrate any efforts on some smaller more formal areas of lawn only.
I hope you are not more confused now at my musings.
...it's not quite an answer but just an account of what we do.
"Dori"