doobin

Up your budget to a 13/15hp one and they are ok ish. But 6hp isn’t enough for what you are wanting. all the brands are the variations built on the same Chinese drum unit and engine

eBay. Brundles are also useful. You might as well make time to do it yourself, otherwise it’ll never be done just how you want it. A pound saved is a pound earned and good fabrication isn’t cheap. Bad fabrication isn’t cheap either when it lets you down.

I run them up to 36” and never had any problems at all.

The guarantee is pretty much worthless anyway, it only covers the post and most of the cost is in the installation.

Rotatech are fine for me in the woods, what issues do you have with them? Semi chisel round here usually, we are on sand. I use an MS462 with a 20” and an echo cs501x with a picco 16”. The picco really makes a difference in the cut speed.

I quoted a job for hugh bonneville a few years back, had no idea who he was.

Guys with family in their 30s are much more reliable for me.

Battery units simply don’t have the power to cope with the extra drag of 3mm line. Much as battery saws won’t pull a 20” bar. It is what it is.

A Stihl FS460 will do all you want, is well balanced, comfortabel harness, and mine have been very tough. The anti vibration of the big petrol Stihls (360 upwards) is far better than the FS70 or 94. Not sure about electric, but I'd rather have the power personally. If you're going in with a tractor flail and then tidying the edges, there may not be a lot to strim but it will still be plenty thick, and you need a brushcutter not a strimmer IMHO. As for petrol getting more expensive- I take it you're not looking to change the tractor for a hydrogen one on that basis?! So don't worry about it, that litre of petrol for strimming the edges will save you many times it's cost over waiting for a comparatively gutless battery machine to finish the job. If you don't like the smell, leave the strimmer on the trailer with the tractor! Batteries are great for domestics, they are not cost effective enough yet for commercial and rural clearance. There's a reason forestry crews don't run electric saws yet (and probably never will)

Sounds way over the top, unless the access is terrible. Sure you can't get a tracked dumper near?

I've got a Scag which is a similar design I should think. But for long grass, you need a rotary mower, not a flail. All that happens with a flail in long grass(unless you are driving it with 50hp per meter) is that the grass wraps around the flail and stops it working.

Beautifully put, John. As I said, getting the money out of him won't be simple. You could consider it a relatively cheap lesson. I seem to recall (and apologies in advance if I am wrong), a lengthy thread a few months back where you were wanting to charge a customer more money on top of a quote as things were taking longer than you thought to cut a large hedge. Others pointed out there that you can't have your cake and eat it. Did you walk away or finish the job? The lesson that I would take away from both these cock-ups is that you need to be much more rigid at agreeing and documenting terms. Is it a quote or a day rate hire? If you are going to do day rate hires, you need a watertight set of terms and conditions that place the risk in the job upon the customer. In the plant world we use the CPA model terms. This, along with a polite email explaining that you will forgo the profit on a job in return for them accepting the risk by signing, would go a long way to ensuring that you have at least one leg to stand upon should it make it to small claims court. Even then it's not a sure thing, as the CPA model terms are biased towards contractors subbing to other firms, where there could easily be a big game of 'pass the risk parcel', rather than domestic where a judge might side with the householder. All in all, John's suggestion of working back from the quote for less money (ie, leave brash on the floor) is probably the best route to go down in future. Don't feel too bad mate- remember this. You pay to learn. It's as true now as when I first heard it, and whilst I don't pay nearly as much in tuition fees to the UOL (uni of life 🤣) as I used too, I still keep my alumni association subscription active!

He should pay for the day and recovery. He wanted to hire you and the machine daily to save money, versus a quote where you assumed the risk. It’s simple. getting the money out of him won’t be simple though.

If you've been driving around without locking it then you could well have trashed the internal seals, either in the ram or the valve. Bouncing a nose heavy trailer down the road will cause big pressure spikes.

Briggs have never made a decent engine in their history. All overmarketed crap. Briggs and scrap 'em.