Opico Skidster or sherpa mini loaders

[Dave Alviti]

Little video of our hire Giant SK252 in action - with the Klou KSG1 Stump grinder - I was pleasantly surprised by how effective this was - Not in the league of a dedicated self propelled machine, but certainly similar to the smaller hp pedestrian machines in my opinion. Nice thing with this unit is you can interchange the attachment plate, it's the same grinder on the Giant and the mini digger, 4 bolts to swap it over. 

 

 

[Mark Bolam]

28 minutes ago, AHPP said:

Mark, Describe your use in case I’ve assumed it wrongly.

Have you got a blue pincer grab, doobin.

Shifting rings like Doobin says, shifting grinder arisings and sawdust, and piling brash straight into it.

You can also fix plates to the side to make a Heath Robinson bucket with the grab upright, as I’ll sub to a few builder mates.

 

I do see the grab as a must, like.

 

I’ll also want to move the chipper with it on some jobs.

Cast make a dedicated plate with a 50mm ball, and attachments are easy on/off, but I’d probably fab up a cheapo that fixes to the bucket.

 

It’s all good, there are so many options.

 

How do you transport your machine Alex?

I’m keen to see a vid of someone loading one up ramps into a Transit bed or similar.

[AHPP]

No, just a grapple bucket. I'm mainly groundworks, if I do domestic arb I like the mini chipper right next to the tree and then carry the chip out and tip into truck. Just can't see the point in dragging branches down the house to the chipper, leaving crap everywhere and smashing things up. Keep the mess next to the drop zone and have an easy clear up. If the job is that big that you need a Heziohack parked in the driveway then odds are you've got room for a larger loader anyhow.
 
The 76cm grapple bucket with the sides removed is the perfect weapon for moving 70cm chunks of butt.
 
Also, why do you assume my grab would be blue?

Just the Sherpa pincer grabs that I’ve seen have all been blue.

[doobin]

1 hour ago, Mark Bolam said:

Shifting rings like Doobin says, shifting grinder arisings and sawdust, and piling brash straight into it.

You can also fix plates to the side to make a Heath Robinson bucket with the grab upright, as I’ll sub to a few builder mates.

 

I do see the grab as a must, like.

 

I’ll also want to move the chipper with it on some jobs.

Cast make a dedicated plate with a 50mm ball, and attachments are easy on/off, but I’d probably fab up a cheapo that fixes to the bucket.

 

It’s all good, there are so many options.

 

How do you transport your machine Alex?

I’m keen to see a vid of someone loading one up ramps into a Transit bed or similar.

Honeslty mate, loading it is a piece of cake. Just stand at the back of it rather than on it to keep the weight nose heavy and start onto the ramps. Then drop the bucket a touch (from where it was high to clear them at the start) to keep balanced and up you go. Because its wheeled rather than tracked the breakover point doesn't make you shit yourself.

 

Also, with the grab bucket, you can just put the bucket cheeks on and then pull three pins and the grab bit with the ram removes (on the Sherpa one at least). Only thing is, if you are narrow width you will really want the high capacity bucket to shift enough at once- I've got one on order having seen how well it handles a full bucket of the 112cm variety.

Edited January 19, 2022 by doobin

[william127]

4 hours ago, doobin said:

Go for it mate, it's almost even more of a relevation for me than the Multione was. The Multione saves a lot of machine time- this thing saves actual labour!

 

It runs the grab just fine, obviously. I've tried it with a pecker (hired) but wasn't impressed. Not an ideal job- it was a attacking a wall with the breaker horizontal up a slight incline, so in order to make the pecker work you had to keep pushing it into the wall. Drive motors rob the flow, so pecker barely worked. However, this would be exactly the same if you tried to do the same with a micro digger- the difference is with a micro digger you can use the arm to push which uses a lot less flow. I'm sure the Sherpa would be fine breaking vertically. With an auger, well, it's going to be the same as the micro digger, 20 litres a minute. It'll be way better than by hand, and ideal for certain jobs. But I didn't buy it to run attachments, I bought it to lift and shift repeatedly, which it excels at.

 

Re stumpgrinder- even if you go for the diesel or twin cylinder petrol options, flow isn't much better. 25 or 28 l/min is nothing when it comes to stumpgrinders- still a waste of time. You never see people running stump grinders on 1.8t mini diggers do you? Even on 2.7t diggers with 50l/min it's widely accepted that they are a poor compromise. So I don't see the point in paying a lot extra for the different engines. If you really want to run attachments with flow, the only mini skid model to consider is the Giant 252 which is a marvel of compactness- they've squeezed a Kubota D902 with 33l/min flow into a machine just 780mm wide. However it was a fair bit more money (£18k bare machine) and at 810kg it's starting to become a bit cumbersome to shift about. And still not really enough flow to do anythign with. But if you don't have an articulated loader, and want just one machine to do it all- got to be worth a look.

 

Only way to go for loader stump grinder is an engine mounted next to the stump grinder attachment, which I will get around to one day.

I'm pretty sure I will, just need to do few sums and get some money in for the the upfront payment but I'm pretty sure the monthly £ will be more than covered by the productivity increase. Not to mention the reduced physical strain and more enjoyable working!

The attached photo(annoyingly I never got a decent picture of them on the forks) was part of what's really pushing me towards it- I spent ages carrying these heavy, filthy oak sleepers out to stack onto the trailer, the yard loader emptied the trailer in 2 minutes!  So a really portable machine that could easily have loaded them on the site would be perfect....

 

I'm not too bothered about using a breaker on it, I'd use prefer to use it on the micro digger but it's always nice to have options!  

An auger would be more useful and a more likely buy. I used one on an Opico years ago and that seemed good. 

I'm sure I could make adapter brackets so I could use the same auger or breaker on the micro digger and the loader.

 

I've no intention of using a stump grinder on it, as has been said they're just not powerful enough.  Although I do like the sound of a self powered grinder just using the loader as a carrier. 

I'm also thinking that a towed quad bike mower could be rejigged in a similar fashion 🤔🤔

 

The more I think about it, the more jobs I can see for one👌

 

[Mark Bolam]

Thanks mate.

You wouldn’t reverse load it?

[doobin]

21 minutes ago, Mark Bolam said:

Thanks mate.

You wouldn’t reverse load it?

Personally no. You have more control over any machine if you are not standing on it whilst loading, and if you were standing on it then you are the only thing stopping it tipping over forwards. Much easier to just step off and walk it up. Basically, don't worry about transporting it, it's so easy.

[Mick Dempsey]

I only load articulated loaders but the mantra is load in reverse, always.

 

 

[doobin]

46 minutes ago, Mick Dempsey said:

I only load articulated loaders but the mantra is load in reverse, always.

 

 

That’s because the counterweight  is the heaviest bit on an articulated loader. On a pedestrian loader the driver is the counterweight- this particular style of counterweight is very variable, often twitchy and prone to instinctively jumping off if things go pear shaped! Therefore it’s best to remove it entirely from the equation and to know that the bucket is keeping the machine balanced the way it needs to be up the ramps. 
 

You just walk up behind it, like you would a tracked chipper. 

[Mick Dempsey]

I’ll take your word for it. 👍