Jonny69

They are quite rare but I have seen a Brian James crossover in the flesh once. It's an option on the cargo connect I think. I can't work out how to send the image, if you google images "Brian James Cross Over" its the first image EDIT: Forgot to say it was very good, well thought out and easy to use. I would guess much better than anything you could homebrew

nice video, what model is the Rayco? Its got a really good chip throw for a drum.

Firstly, doing loads of grinding with that machine is always going to hammer your body. I get 100-150 hours on a bandit HB20 which I guess will be similar to what that will do. I don't think youll get away with just bearing though. I always have to replace shaft and bearings. When they start to go at tickover the machine will shake unusually, we can't normally tell any difference when its at full revs but it basically wobbles the whole machine at tickover. Which is when you know the bearing and shaft are on borrowed time.

That's sound, they all smoke a bit on startup so I wouldn't worry if the smoke is only for 10 seconds. Mine is low on compression and its a right pain to start in the cold and smokes for ages, but when warmed up its fine.

A full engine rebuild on that will be 4-5k. But that is pretty much everything and should be good for another several thousand hours. A new crate engine from Deutz is about £6500 I think.

Are you trying to setup the stress control? If so just use the actual engine speed and forget about the multiplier in the tacho for PPR. I.e you want stress low to come in at 2200rpm and stress high to come in at 2600rpm engine speed then you can have the tacho and stress control unit reading incorrectly but they actually function correctly. If your engine is doing real max revs of 3000 and the tacho reads 2200 then just setup the stress for it to work at 2200 max revs correctly and it will be fine. There is a bandit list somewhere with their models, engines and PPR settings which I found once setting up my 150 stress control. Of course I cant find it now!

You will have to absorb 16.66%, not 20% as you are knocking the vat off the total.

Problem is with this plan, almost everyone has a truck and chipper already. You would be better off buying a machine that's a bit specialist and subbing to people that way. With basic work tools and maybe a tracked chipper, cherry picker, skid steer/loader, excavator with tree attachments. There is always work for diggers and cherry pickers even if its not just related to cutting trees.

At 115k I would expect it to have been off at least twice. Once for the turbo and again for the gearbox, unless the gearbox hasn't been out. In which case you are on borrowed time with that. Unlikely the sensors then, unless one sensor down throws the whole lot out of sync. I've had three disco 4s and a 3, diagnosing electrical faults on them is a bit of a game. The only reason I mention the body being off is because they find loads of electrical faults after all the connectors have been disturbed, you seem to get a run of issues afterwards.

S-type is quite old so probably not the same unit. No doubt they are almost identical though. Will almost certainly need coding as well, everything on them seems to need it. Out of interest how many miles and has the body been off for some work?

I have a Jo Beau M400 and a 12inch tracked bandit. For me its ideal to be able to cover a decent spread of work. We can get in the back garden for little trees with the jo beau, which happens surprisingly often. Then can be machine feeding the bandit when required on bigger jobs Personally I don't see the point of 6 inch whatever make chippers. If I was to run a transit van type setup it would be with at least a 12inch road tow (probably american) machine. Bandit sell a 15inch road tow machine which is under 3500kg which would take the snedding out of most jobs. That M500 is bargain for £3k even if its tatty looking. The build quality on my Jo Beau is a bit questionable but they are built to a weight so I don't hold it against them.

Check the engine spec. There was a change in 2014/2015 (I think) and you want the earlier variant of the engine. I assume it was emissions related. You can tell as the older one is the 197bhp and the newer has less power, it also has less torque. They are slow, noisy tow vehicles compared to modern stuff but get the job done. Definitely built to last and quite good off road with all the lock ups engaged.

Is there some way you could have a French trailer chassis sent to the UK and have the chipper bolted to fit? That might open up the options significantly.

The Vermeer machine is pretty good. The grapples are really not good, Id buy a grapple off someone else.

Like most things in life, there are auto boxes and there are auto boxes. The Asian stuff is generally very reliable but not very clever and they feel rubbish compared to a decent auto box. I believe the ranger 3.2 has a box which is fords own unit. Probably the same as fitted to their cars in the US. It is a bit clunky, not very clever but should be be good for towing and off road. In fact of all the ranger issues I know people have had I've never heard of the box being an issue. A lot of companies use ZF. Ive got one in a Land rover, they are in Audi and probably loads of others. They are superb. Smooth, fast, great when towing. Ive got another car from 2007 with a Getrag auto box and its nothing like the ZF in the newer land rover. Its smooth enough but takes an age to shift in comparison, however it handles a lot of power and torque very well and is apparently good for loads of miles. It will also locks the torque converter in 1st immediately so it launches better than a manual. Another point, in my opinion an auto box is better off road. You have no loss of momentum when shifting gears which makes a huge difference when trying to maintain speed or accelerate up a hill. This is even more noticeable when towing off road.