doobin

The Honda mountfields are great mowers- much more reliable than my £1000 Etesia or the £700 Viking.

If only employing were as simple as just buying a machine, I'm sure may on here would be pushing their businesses to the next level! I'd stick with subcontractors, and look to bring them in on a profit share/tonnage rate. Your game is nicely simple, in that if you want to expand, you need to process more volume. It's easily quantifiable, and therefore easily paid by results. Where you need to differ from others is in offering a reasonable share of the pie. Nobody will stick around grafting in the woods for 26k per year. Pay by results, fix your costs, but be fair. A forwarder costs a lot more to run than a saw, cutters need to appreciate that. If they are motivated enough to help find work and markets for the timber, then pay them for that. Etc. A collective, if you will, with each bringing skills and machines to the table and each taking a fair proportion in return for effort, capital and risk expended. If your existing cutters are really that good, then bring them on board further. Or you can have the stress of a churn of cheaply paid, un-motivated staff. Either can make money, it's up to you how you go forward. I'm done with the days of seven blokes on the books.

My missus gets 28k a year working from home in a marketing job, she started with no experience a couple of years ago. The problem UK wide isn't wages. It's that the cost of living, primarily that of putting a roof over your head, has at least trebled since the 90s. So to answer your question, £26-28k became a shite wage when house prices were allowed by successive governments to soar past 3x average annual earnings.

Smart move. Stick with the Jap ranger.

Briggs are total shit. Always have been, always will be. The only people who think they are good are people who think Black and Decker is a good power tool brand. All marketing, no substance. Let this be a lesson to anyone reading. Briggs and scrap em. Many a true word said in jest.

No, but you can share the chains with your existing saws which is a plus. I don’t have an 881, so is the consensus that the bar mount is the same as, say, the 661?

If bar mount is the issue, then surely a question for @RobD?

I've ordered these for use in the machine- hoping they will let me just answer calls whilst driving and the other person be able to hear!

Thread redirection! Finally bolted our extension together along with a subframe extension. Cut some weatherboard to test it- perfect cut with no deviation.

I would imagine the seals in the injection pump area refers to the wire threaded through all the adjustment bolts and crimped with a Kubota seal- tamper evident.

Then just open them up and measure them to order them.

Looks like such a two bob operation I wouldn't waste your time.

The only machines that collect reasonably in the wet are the fan assisted ones, be that the Kaaz pedestrian design or a fan vaccum collector behind a compact tractor. Even then it's not great, but sometimes needs must!

Any decent hydraulic repair shop will be able to reseal for you. They are not too massive to courier either.

I really, really like that. You get so much more interesting and better value machines in the Nordic countries. What money? Will it suit your work?

And if you're complaining about a lack of power, how much worse will the 26hp version be??

All set for a couple of hours flailing for a local farmer prior to him fencing. The offset flail is a bit of a pig to set up as you have to change the hydraulic link to a solid one as not enough spools and adjust the link arms too but it’s very quick and agile once it’s on- makes it easy to get right up to the hedge and along banks. I leave the head angle on the float setting, it does a grand job.

No, yours is the full fat version and turbo to boot.

You've got to be realistic- you're a very limited market. Quite possible the only one. Find yourself a knowledgeable sparky and install an invertor, or even just get a nice silent 3 phase generator. I can recommend this- BISON WHISPER 10KVA DIESEL GENERATOR - Warrior Welders WWW.WARRIORWELDERS.COM The Bison Mark II Generator is a very reliable air-cooled, single-cylinder, portable, open-framed diesel generator... I have the single phase version and the power it puts out is incredible. Welds as good as the mains from my 250 amp single phase MIG. Phil Weeks knows his onions.

I can live with 2-3 litres per hour. I knew DW are expensive but figured it was like Kanga- stupidly expensive in the UK (check out Redband UK for prices on a Kanga that won't even lift high enough to load a Transit!) but not so much in the States or Aus where they are very common. I was thinking it would be around £20k new. Either way it's a solid, rebuildable bit of kit.

I'm hoping it's just one motor or pump, and a £300-400 rebuild! Gremlins are coming out, she's starting to run rough. Bloody carbs.

Give me a diesel engine for this kind of application any day! The petrol ones won't last half as long.

100% legit. Nice guy, had it from new. Does screw piles etc. Also runs Bobcat, but much older models than me. We had a coffee and talked shop for a good hour. I actually paid £5k, but it came with a Digga PD3 which is a larger auger than my current motors which will be good on the backhoe- up to 115 litres/min. So I'm allowing a grand for that in my head and hence the loader owes me £4k. That's good to know, I couldn't find a cost comparison. It's a 2011, hour clock not working. I figured even with rebuilding a pump or motor, it was the same price as a very old Opico Skidster so I couldn't really loose - @dumperis always telling me I need a tracked loader so maybe that'll keep him quiet 😆

I can run my 38hp tractor with stump grinder on 25-30 litres of red for a day of hard grinding. So that's £22-28! Diesel has always been cheaper for the HP than petrol (even when leaving red out of it and just comparing petrol with DERV). The upfront cost of a diesel engine was always slightly more, and the emmissions bollocks is what's really killed it- I was told around £6k on the cost of Euro 4 engine with DPF etc vs the same HP at Euro 3. Hence the big switch to petrol engines- but there's no way these will last as long as a diesel. Now Arb is OK on red again I think we will see a surge of sales of diesel kit as people swallow the extra emmisions costs so they can run red.

Same as Dingo, Toro and Vermeer as I understand it. Very commom in the States and Aus. Actually a very similar design to Avant but a touch wider.