doobin

Very rare in the UK, short dippers. Everyone is mad on max dig depth for some reason but it’s just not needed most of the time and has a negative effect on everything you do with the digger out of the ground.

I love it on the right job. The right job is one with restricted access. Otherwise I hate it as a grab/rotator machine, it’s gutless in the lift compared to the e27 and even with the short dipper runs out of lift height very quickly. That said, it’s still a very capable (possibly the most capable) 1.9t machine I’ve tried- it’s just that none of them measure up to a 2.7t. frankly I don’t think you will find a secondhand one with a short dipper. I’m fairly sure mine is the only short dipper machine ever sold in the uk! The secondhand ones you’re looking at won’t have four pipes either but if they have the roller on each joystick (and no foot pedals for the swing/aux) then they are cheap enough to add extra aux pipes to. Id be looking for a sany or luigong to test the water- four pipes as standard and cheap machines. Often bought new by people who are looking for a cheap machine to be their own boss and are the first to let them go in a downturn- so haggle hard on price. If you like the machine you could always have an engineering firm shorten the dipper. You could also speak to Hywel Evans- he’s usually got something kicking around. He had a sany with cab and 300 hours for sale at 12k for ages- couldn’t shift it. He can also fit extra aux pipes to most machines.

This is the thread you need. Barely 2 pages and my posts cover the essentials. Basically the spec you need to run a grab and rotator sucessfully (four aux lines, short dipper) will be special order from new and expensive. And still painfull to use compared to a 2.7t machine. You're probably only looking at 8, maybe even just 6k difference between a new 2.7t and a 2t in the spec you are asking about. Recent prices I've seen for the E19/20 in that spec were 23/34k, the Yanmar 2.7t is available from around 30.5k. Sany or LuiGong often have four lines as standard and are the cheaper end of the market, so worth a look. But don't underestimate the frustration of having a long dipper coupled with a grab and rotator.

Charging for oil burnt is ridiculous- the engine shouldn’t burn any whatsoever let alone half a litre in four hours. The stop switch was probably around £50 from Timberwolf and ten minutes to fit. Id be disputing it.

Is that £1500 per truck? Not terrible I agree. i think my broker flat out refuses to cover under 21. Fleet and commercial.

It adds a whacking chunk to it though. Mine used to be any age, then it was 21, then 25. I almost passed out when they suggested last renewal that it be ‘any driver over thirty’ How on earth will young people get jobs at this rate?

What’s your budget?

I’m sure you know this, and you’re just being facetious with the resident drunken anarchist. But for the benefit of those more easily led astray… These don’t have a proper seal, just a loose bit of plastic against the end where the blades protrude from. It’s not like a round shaft where a rotary lipped seal can easily form a total seal against the oil. I laughed at his post because although he have have filled it with chain oil, he hasn’t yet realised that there’s none left inside it unless he’s stored it standing up for the last 15 years and not used it. Your workshop is full of trimmers for the reason that people assume once it’s ’filled with grease’ then it’s good. What actually happens is that they get hot with use, the grease gets liquid, and escapes from the blade end. And then it’s not replaced. What’s left inside emulsifies with the loss of the oil component of the grease through heat and ends up in the familiar waxy looking crap everywhere in the head except where it’s needed- on the gears and in particular the con rod bearings. stick a grease nipple into the fitting and grease it every other time it’s used and they will not fail.

Out yesterday doing some scrapes with the jcb. The TAB boom is so handy- lets you pull back in nice and tight to undercut the bracken rhizome cleanly against the blade. Then lift it up tight to build a bund behind you at a higher elevation.

Nice and cheap?

An impact wrench with 500nm of torque will stop turning a big auger long before a drill with 250nm. Impact wrenches provide jolts of peak torque to fulfil their design function of loosening or tightening a machine thread. All that happens when you stick an auger on them is that the tensile strength of the wood fibres absorbs the jolt of toque and the auger fails to advance any further. Impact drivers are use to drive screws into wood, yes, but the purpose of the jolts of torque there is to prevent cam out- where the driver bit slips in the head. Driver bits with a positive lock on the fiuxing head (such as timberlocks with their hex head) do not require an impact driver and will in fact drive far faster with the sustained torque offered by a drill. I must have explained this a dozen times over the years on here, and yet still people just can't grasp such a simple fact. A long arm brace on a quality drill allows you to impact far more torque into a wood thread or auger bit than you ever could with an impact gun.

These firms are full of shit. Greenwashing. you’ll get a mango tree planted in a plantation that was going to be planted anyhow, for profit. or it’ll be a scheme that starts off with good intentions, but there is no aftercare and every tree droughts off. There’s no regulatory body for all this bollocks. No oversight. Don’t waste your money.

‘Impact rated’ is nothing like the same as ‘an impact driver is faster than the sustained torque offered by a decent drill’

Yes, very easy to heat the auger up and then tie it in a knot.

. VersaDrive® TurboTip from Holemaker Technology HOLEMAKER-TECHNOLOGY.COM VersaDrive® TurboTip Impact drill bits are stepped tip bits that drill at twice the speed of standard bits without... these? don’t see them recommending and impact driver over a drill there.