doobin

A thumb is OK for some stuff, but hopeless for others. A grapple is a good halfway house between the thumb and a proper grab, especially if you make the back half hydraulic. Any time lost swapping to grapple is soon regained by not messing about with a thumb IMHO. A normal fixed (or even hydraulic) thumb is good for big rocks when trenching, any other jobs make it look clumsy compared to a grapple. As the guys above state, the design of the thumb as well as the attachment it's paired with makes a big difference as to what you can do with it, and from this point of view it has merit. However, you've got to have a lot of one sort of work to justify making an awesome thumb/attachment combo up for it, so I stand by my point that a grapple is a much better all rounder for most. If all you are doing is loading firewood, by far and away the best soloution would be a cheap dangle type grab/rotator plus an electronic flow divertor. With a thumb or a grapple, you really need to constantly be at 90 degrees to to pick up/drop off point, which is hard to achieve in reality. Being able to rotate is a game changer, and for dangle mount on a mini digger it's often cheaper than you think.

Is that a worm drive rotator? I know they offer a low profile one but it was a lot more money, in hindsight I should have gone for it with the amount I use the grab. edit- found the original email. The lower profile rotator was 2.4K rather than £900- and from the photo they sent not much of a stack height saved on a 2.7t setup.

I got a 2009 with 120k for 3.5k plus vat. Apparently the engines go on for a good while if you look after them.

As mentioned, sycamore always goes moudly.

What spec and year? I only have the 2.3l, but it pulls well. Apparently the 3l engines actually give more problems.

I can’t recommend an Iveco daily enough. Makes a transit feel like a toy. Hell of a tow vehicle, plated for 7.5t GTW.

I get you. I’m similar. But have a little compassion, and imagine if this had hit you just as you opened your first barbers salon. Which you had worked bloody hard on. I admitted in my first post that I’d had more than my fair share of dumb luck this pandemic. The ones hit the worst by this will be the go-getters in a different industry- through no fault of their own.

This might be controversial to some but I'd welcome seeing more of that in future. Obviously we're never going to get the lack of contrails that we saw in Lockdown, but I'm sure a big reduction would be possible and very much needed. The less exotic holidays and business travel the better IMO, for various reasons. We’ve proved that most ‘business’ business can be done online. No need to fly to Germany for a meeting.

Whilst I appreciate how good it has been for you (and countless retirees), I personally am not willing to let your (presumably well off, middle class) voices calling for more lockdowns (ostensibly to ‘save the nhs’) drown out the voices of those suffering. We can’t go on like this. The critically vulnerable are now vaccinated. The mildly vulnerable are now well on their way. Soon as that’s done, that’s it as far as I am concerned. Lockdown over. Let the poor ****************ers who already owe a years rent arrears get their lives back on track. If they drag this out any longer, I will be at the front of any riots. 😂

Yup. That and a discount off our house purchase at the start of lockdown as we were one of few with a mortgage approval in place. sheer, dumb luck. Right place at right time. I do feel for others not so fortunate.

Way overpriced. Don’t think that year were common rail either which really limits you on power- I know for rangers mine on a 57 plate was one of the first common rail models. Crap turning circle on L200 also.

Hate to break it to you but the auger will be bugger all use for that scenario. Only really any use for sandy soil or clay, and only really save time on clay soil as you can’t dig it with the spoons. Any rocks, let alone metal spikes and an old post will mean that it’s trying to break your wrists rather than dig a hole.

Rangers have been good to me.

What's the markup for the fancy box then? 🤣

The housing system is broken. With the stroke of a planners pen, land values multiply by a hundredfold. Young people are then suckered into servicing a lifetime of debt for a shitty new build house. House prices are unsustainable, they are kept propped up by an ever increasing array of wheezes from the government. Help to buy was bollocks- 50k a house went straight on the price and then into Persimmon's profits. Interest rates are currently at an emergency rate cut on top of an emergency rate cut on top of the lowest rates in history. Negative rates are being proposed. Buy to let landlords have a chokehold on young families trying to get ahead- things our parents took for granted. The current stamp duty freeze is bollocks- people are paying 40k extra to save 15k in tax! The can is being kicked down the road. I'm past the jealousy phase mate- I make OK money and have fun doing it with lots of toys. I have a nice starter house with my missus- an old flint cottage with character and great views, for less than the price of a red brick new build. But this crisis has turned the way I see things. You have people who, through no fault of their own, have accurued a year of debts all the whilst whilst having no way to earn money. Just because I am, on the face of it, a go-getting 'have'- doesn't mean I don't have sympathy for people who are suffering, especially if they were the same as me beforehand but for a different business. But yes Eggs, I am possibly conflating two different issues, although they are both intertwined. There's my suggestion for raising more tax though. Were I PM, my manifesto would be less tax for genuine businesses, and more tax for speculators, gamblers and people who get lucky due to a broken system. Capital gains tax it could be argued is a tax upon gains won in the course of business. Hence the term 'windfall tax' I feel is more appropriate.

I'm suggesting a further one, on top of capital gains tax.

How about a windfall tax on planning permissions? The whole housing system is a crock of shite whereby a lucky few win the lottery and get planning permission on a field for 200 houses. They pocket millions, everyone else pays through the nose just to live in a new build shithole and the countryside gets destroyed.

Stump grinder wants lots of hydraulic flow, which neither machine you describe will provide. You'd be better off mounting a petrol grinder to the headstock somehow. I think someone on here did that for an E10 micro digger.

I have always very little in the bank but lots of machinery, tools and assets. What are you trying to buy? You'll often find finance much, much easier to get against a brand new asset of known value than secondhand.

Seems to be the case. I opened a business account shortly before Covid simply because personal overdraft rates were about to rocket. Stupid, dumb luck on the timing. I didn't put a penny through it. When I called about changing the overdraft over, they said they couldn't, depsite me being a sole trader, as they couldn't take into account personal banking (used for business) history. They could, however, give me 50k in a BBL straight away without any checks. So I took the 50k. It was the first transaction into business account!! The support has definately not been particularly targeted, but without the time to means test everything what else could they do? I do feel lucky. If I was in running the same size business but in hospitality, I'd probably be suicidal by now.

Briggs are shit. It needs a Honda instead.

I love my 462, especially with a West Coast Custom exhaust mod. However,I also really love my little Echo CS501SX, and had I had that before the 462 I may well have tried an Echo instead. That said, the Stihl is a fair bit more powerful for a good deal less weight. But I like the Echo 2 year commercial warranty. Stihl warranty is barely worth a wank.

Same goes for drill grinders.

1t digger is ideal for garden fencing jobs. It can scratch out levels, auger holes and lift ten foot concrete posts in and out of hole no sweat, plus it will fit anywhere. If you're going for a more modern micro such as the 1.2t Bobcat E10, they will handle slightly larger attachments than the old school 750kg micros. I have a Digga PDX3, which is rated for aux flow rates between 30-55 litres/min. Whilst the E10 only puts out 20 litres/min, it just means the auger turns a little slower. Unless you are predominatly on soft sandy ground, I'd rather have an auger with masses more torque turning a little slower than a faster auger that jams every thirty seconds. Plus this way it spans my range from 1.2t, 1.9t and 2.8t, and it's an absoloute weapon at 50litres/min on the E27.

Which model?