Head Ranger Pete

IIRC it got about 35mpg but that wasnt really a fair test because it spent much of its (short) life with me being driven up fire trails etc ( I replaced it with a landrover 130 to give a picture of the sort of abuse it was getting) our new caddy van gets about 50mpg on road if that helps (btw seat make a pick up copy of the caddy as well, plus you can still get good examples of the actual caddy pickup - though good ones are pricey as they are a bit of a classic)

they arent bad - essentially a copy of the caddy pick up. but like slasher says they are low to the ground - about like a usual van , and they are only 2wd so you dont want to be taking them off road ( I had one breifly a few years back - we killed it by taking it off road... lol )

If I was buying for myself i'd entirely agree - when i was a freelance arb , i used to have an ex army 130 with a V8 converted to dual fuel - that was a great truck - i eventually wrote it off by rolling it on the M27 (some pillock in a siera changed lanes into the side of our heavily loaded Ifor) After that I had an ex army lightweight with an aftermarket turbo deisel - that went like the proverbial off a shovel and was relatively okay on fuel. ( I ran that for two years did abour 20k in it and sold it when FMD killred the contracting buisness for 100 quid more than i bought it for - result) I'd love to be able to buy either of those again, but these days now I work for the trust i have to be sensible and seek best value , so buying buzzy roary goodness for the hell of it isnt an option. I'm almost decided on keeping with rangers - but i'm going to test drive a hilux, a rodeo, and a amarok just to be on the safe side

I said are they ? I dont know whether they are or not - though the mitsi dealer that used to service our L200s when i had them also serviced isuzu and used parts interchangeably so they must be fairly similar. Ive also heard that isuzu are tied up with vauxhall which isnt reassuring as ive also had a brava and that was a bag of crap (it got nicked by some travellers - and frankly they were welcome to it)

I can only go from our experience when i took over we had a 06 plate ranger, an 06 plate 110, and an R reg 90 doing the same work the ranger gets average 30mpg and the 110 got average 18mpg - thats quite a significant difference, and is enough to persude us that we dont want another one - we got rid of that 110 (which was leased) and replaced it with a caddy van. and the R reg 90 which is marginally more efficient about 20mpg , but very uncomfortable to drive (which is partly down to my height 6'4") is going next budget year - i havent decided what we are replacing that with yet

It does of course depend on what price you are offering it for and how the woods been treated - if you want to sell stuff for wood turners its best to leave it in fairly large section and seal the ends with PVA or paint then store undercover of the wood in the pictures chances are that the large rings in the picture are too short to be useful after crackage has occured, but someone might take the longer bits for a few bob I know for a fact that on the aforementioned forums (i'm a member of both) there are people who will buy wood like this if the price is reasonable The other side of the coin of the 'cruel myth' is that every second person you encounter who's cut down a walnut tree thinks that it must be gunstock quality and wants hundred of pounds, when the reality is that its glorrified firewood

Cheers that's useful - Ours has a few minor dings and scratches, plus its signwritten so there'll be marks where that comes off, but on the plus side there's a roof rack and winch and it has full landrover service history, and its been looked after mechanically speaking. I was thinking between 4 and 5k so that tallies. We won't be selling it to a dealer (unless we get a damn good deal on part ex) as there are a couple of farmers/contractors locally who've expressed an interest

As I say we are currently running a ranger on lease hire and it isnt too bad - we get about 30mpg average so long as we dont cane it, and it tows adequately and is okay offroad (it would i suspect be a lot better with decent tires - its curently on road spec kumos) We definitely won't be going to landrover because we, and other teams, have run defenders for years and we know all about their good points (off road performance)and bad (on road performance, lack of comfort, fuel cosumption) As i already know about ranger performance the point of this thread was basically to see whether hi lux are as good as people say -and whether its worth the premium over the ranger.

In a stove so long as its already hot pretty much anything will burn - I was burning wet dougie towards the end of last winter (we'd recently moved and not had time to build up a stock of seasoned timber) I was using palet wood to get it going then burning any old crap thereafter- stoves burn much more efficiently than an open fire.

If you offer it on either The Wood Haven or UKWorkshop - The Site For Woodworkers someone will bite your hand off for it (just make it clear that you are offering it as one load not for people to come and pick through (incidentally with regard to the earlier comment about drying - kiln dried is only any good if its dried gently in a dehumdifier kiln - sticking it in a hot kiln will wreck it)

yep - i agree about the defenders ruling supreme offroad- however I doubt i can sell our GM on a 110 crewcab - unfortunately we are always going to be compromising because our estate is quite spread out so it needs to be good off road but still relatively economical and fast on road , and the defender falls down on the latter option we could just buy the existing lease vehicle from lex when the lease ends, or we could get another lease, or we could buy used or new - so long as I stay inside the current cost+inflation the world is my lobster Has anyone used the VW Amarok ?- i'd never encountered it before but we recently bought a caddy van and saw them at the dealership at the same time

good point - but that should also mean that a 1 -2 year old ranger will be a lot cheaper to pick up than a hilux of the same age also good point about the isuzu i'd forgotten about them (although are they basically a mitsibuishi L200 with a different badge) I think i'll sort out a few for test drive - ive got a little while as the lease on the ranger doesnt run out til somepoint next year

East Devon, based out of branscombe - and it would be a braver man than me that called any of my lot an oompaloompa - though technically there's only two of us who can use a bar longer than 16" or do medium and large trees anyway. I'll definitely look into the 341 - maybe I can talk our dealer (who get a lot of buisness from us) into giving us a feild trial I've sold a bunch of machinery this year so i have a one off opportunity to use some of the income to purchase a modest ammount of kit

not strictly tree related but we broke an apple press yesterday - someone (member of the public) put too much pressure on it an snapped the cast on the top bar - good thing one of our tenants is a blacksmith. few weeks ago however I had comprehensive breakage on my peugot partner - new head gasket, coolant pipes, and timing chain

Spot on - we looked at taking on an apprentice earlier this year supported by a local trust and the rules on minimum wage (if over 19) and policies on working with a minor (if under 18) made it a non starter in the end although we wanted to make it a paid training position the red tape just got too strangulating, so we wound up making it a work experience unpaid placement open only to those over 18 , and used the funding to provide a £4k training package for the trainee

Oh yeah i definitely agree with you there, I'm not thinking of ditching any of the saws ( we have 3 260s, a 192, and an 023 all of which are great for scrub bashing, firewood etc) - and apart from anything else we have three on the team who only have cs30/31 so they can't use the bigger saws anyway. and I wont be ditching the 441 either as there are times when we need the brute power of something like that (for one thing i'm thinking about an alaskan mill and the 441 would be spot on for that, and for another we have a couple of dirty great oaks to come down this winter ) I'm just contemplating getting a 362 (or 361, 036, 038 etc) to sit in between and give us more power than an 260 without the weight of a 441

I'm not sure i understand the logic - surely difficulty in starting the saw is down to the size of the engine she's turning over rather than the bar length , so putting a shorter bar on it wont really help and getting a bigger saw is definite no no - I'd be the only one able to use it which would be pretty pointless.

We curently have an 06 plate ranger on lease but we are in the process of swapping our lease hire vehicles for purchased ones (and renewing the old purchased ones which i'll come to in a minute) Until recently I had intended to get a hilux crew cab to replace the ranger at the heart of the fleet, as you hear lots of good stuff about them (the vehicle top gear couldnt kill etc) but I was talking to a colleague from another team last week and he reckoned that his hilux is gutless when pulling heavy trailers and he was set on swapping the other way and getting a Ranger What do you guys think ? (incidentally we've looked at other options but Landrovers are too heavy on the fuel, and I've had L200s before and the clutches were apparently made of soft cheese -5 replacements in 3 years on two vehicles) On the second part of the question what do you reckon an R plate defender 90 hard top with 60ish K on the clock, and a recent head gasket/timing chain, is worth ? (ive looked at autotrader but theres a big variation) - Just to be clear i'm not selling this yet (when we do I'll certainly put it on clasifieds), but its budget setting time and I need to give my boss an idea what I reckon we'll get for it if we sell it next financial year ?

who are, you the incredible hulk ?? I used to have an 060 and I got rid of that because it was too hard to start on a cold morning - I dont even want to think about the 088

okay thanks for that How easy is the 362 to start ? (at 6,4 and 15 stone, the 441 doesnt bother me but my estate ranger is a girl who's about 5,2 and a tad over half my weight and she really struggles to pull it even with the decompression button pressed) (incidentally i'm not being discrimanatory or patronising in observing this, its just a fact - quite often she needs me or another guy to start it for her, but once the saw is running she's the best chainsaw handler/treefaller on our team by a country mile)

thats helpful cheers - I'd like to stay with stihl if I can because all our other saws are stihl, and also because we are out in the sticks and our nearest dealer doesn't stock husky. what's next up from a 362 these days ? (course there's also the option of buying a 361 or 036 second hand if i can find a good one)

Okay new member here so be gentle if its been asked 5 million times already. We've got a bunch of 260s (with 14") and a 441 (with 24") , and while they get the job done , recently I am finding a problem that we've got jobs where the 260 isnt man enough , and the 441 is overkill (also some of my smaller/female staff find it difficult to start the 441 and/or find it a beast to work with all day) I'm thinking maybe a 361 with 20" would be the way to go as a compromise , but i'd be interested in hearing your views For background we are a Ranger team, and are largely engaged in either storm clearance or felling dead/dangerous trees, we don't work aloft (unless standing on top of the truck counts as aloft ) and the biggest trees we are likelyt deal with are about 30" dia.