william127

Yep, I've had all the top of the range head and hand torches over the years, the last couple of years I've switched to cheaper but still half decent ones, and lots of them! Better a good torch that you've got to hand than a brilliant one that you've left at home!😅😅

Yep, I'm similar 👍

I've had worse days....👌👌 I wouldn't want to do it every day but 1 a week would be very welcome.

Nice windblown eucalyptus today, 1 load of chip, 2 trailer loads of logs. What wasn't so nice was the drag, down steps, under arches, round sheds😅😅 The tracked dumper being worth it's weight in gold again, taking the logs to the trailers that couldn't get within 50 yards of the job👌👌

Stepping on and off instantly is one of the things that appeals to me the most about these machines 👌👌

No not at all as that still doesn't take the cost of the land into account.

That's what they claimed in the final episode but anyone with a bit of common sense could see that is TV bullshit- the way that figure was put across would mean he was buying a new tractor, cultivator etc every year! So he did make 50 grand or so- still bugger all for the millions of pounds worth of land and the hours worked but it is an entertainment programme, not a company accounts report so its probably not 100percent accurate! Farmers seem to have had a positive reaction to it from what I've read/heard. It's certainly a better show of farming than the vegan friendly drivel that Countryfile has become, or the BBCs wheelchair and headscarf festival as Clarkson referred to it in his newspaper column 😅😅😅

I've got 2 sealey 3 ton Yankee trolley Jack's, big heavy lumps that are mainly used on defenders and discovery's. One is 15 years old and still great condition. They're not particularly cheap, about £100 from memory but seem worth it.

Had a good afternoon on my splitter today, did about 4 crates out of some really nasty/old stuff from right in the back corner of the shed. I also did a crate of ash earlier in the week, straight off the back of the defender. I think I handled these the absolute minimum- once into the dumper, once onto the splitter! The splitter is a JSA on a table I made from an old diesel tank stand, running off 8 meter extension pipes so I don't have to get the loader/tractor right up to it to power the splitter, which has the bonus of keeping the noise/exhaust fumes at the far end of the shed.

It's a good splitting axe, you won't be disappointed 👍

That's a fair point and yes if I was splitting as a form of exercise then yes I would pick the the x27.I have in fact done just that in the past, popping into the shed and giving 200 fast, decent swings to get a sweat up before going home in the evening. With the added bonus of some usable wood.

I have an x21, x25, x27 and at least 2 small fiskars, can't remember which models. Probably a bit excessive but I know I've not paid full price for any of them! For splitting I tend to use the x21 and x27 as a pair, doing most of the splitting with the x21 and breaking the big/knarly stuff with the x27. the x25 is ideal for taking out to tree jobs for busting rings if needed. The hatchets are more for camping and offroading etc. If I was only buying 1 it would probably be the x25 as its big enough for splitting pretty much anything but not as heavy as the x27. Like others have said, they are gathering a bit of dust since I got my splitter sorted 😅😅😅

I've got the manual so I've only got 6 gears to play with, which isn't enough, but at least I can choose when to change!

I've got a new 2.0 ranger and all I can say is thank god its only on a 3 year lease! It's a car engine, has no place in a truck, there's just not enough mass in the engine to my mind. My Dad has 3.2, I know which one will be in the scrap yard first.... I'm not looking forward to deciding on its replacement, but I think it's going to be a discovery 4 (possibly 5, depending on how the market looks at the time) and just accept that it'll need a lot more spending on maintenance. At least I'll be driving something I like, and it'll be 4 times as good a tow vehicle!

Good shout, I have a gh94, 2.7HD and it is the nuts, so solid with loads of tie down points.

So bloody true, our g106 eats left hand wheels and tyres as they're always in the gutters of country lanes!🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ A gx105 is on the 'one day' shopping list as the actual trailer itself is brilliant As for the original post, 10ft is a lovely size to tow and use👍

Trouble is finding them though? I've certainly seen a few but there's none about at the moment. Not that I'm actually looking for one to buy, it's a new Sherpa I'll be after👍

That's what I'd do, the best loader you can afford for site work, cheap old tractor for logs and fields👍 If you buy a cheap old tractor for your own use you'll struggle to loose money on it if you needed to sell/upgrade in a year or so. The money you spend buying it you'd probably save from being able to buy cheap used implements, rather than new, expensive, machine specific loader attachments....

I'm pretty sure I will, just need to do few sums and get some money in for the the upfront payment but I'm pretty sure the monthly £ will be more than covered by the productivity increase. Not to mention the reduced physical strain and more enjoyable working! The attached photo(annoyingly I never got a decent picture of them on the forks) was part of what's really pushing me towards it- I spent ages carrying these heavy, filthy oak sleepers out to stack onto the trailer, the yard loader emptied the trailer in 2 minutes! So a really portable machine that could easily have loaded them on the site would be perfect.... I'm not too bothered about using a breaker on it, I'd use prefer to use it on the micro digger but it's always nice to have options! An auger would be more useful and a more likely buy. I used one on an Opico years ago and that seemed good. I'm sure I could make adapter brackets so I could use the same auger or breaker on the micro digger and the loader. I've no intention of using a stump grinder on it, as has been said they're just not powerful enough. Although I do like the sound of a self powered grinder just using the loader as a carrier. I'm also thinking that a towed quad bike mower could be rejigged in a similar fashion 🤔🤔 The more I think about it, the more jobs I can see for one👌

Just buy it... That's advice I can get on with👌👌 Have you tried an auger on yours or any other hydraulic attachments? I'd be buying the same one as you have. I'm thinking of a job I did before Christmas, me and a lad borrowed 8 ton of soil into a job, then 30 rolls of turf. We took the digger to load the soil into barrows, so I had a trailer, boards etc. If I'd had a loader, I could have done it by myself in about the same amount of time. Do that twice a month and it's paid for.... I also think I could legally fit the micro, slanetrac and one of these on the trailer in one legal load. With boards etc on the tipper. I best send arblease an email 😅😅🤦‍♂️

Having spent a couple of hours reading through this thread and some other places, I reckon one of these is going to be my next big purchase... It ticks a lot of boxes, especially working on my own most of the time. It'd save a lot effort over lifting bags of cement/blocks/sleepers into the tracked dumper and that's not even thinking about the jobs where it can shovel/dump loose material.👌👌👌 I'm thinking pallet forks, bucket and muck grab to start with, followed by a log grab and the 'pin bucket' (looks like a muck fork) later🤔 I really need to make a note of everywhere I could use it on all the jobs I look at in the next couple of months, including working out if it will actually save time/effort when the time spent transporting it etc is taken into account.

Very smart, I'd be perfectly happy running that today as well. I spent many evenings after school on a hinowa like that when I was 14, 20 years ago, bumping out paving slabs and shifting soil on one of my Dads sites. I never used a tracked dumper to match it till I got the slanetrac, all the others were either weird- strange forward tipping arrangements, high masts that you have to look round- or just not very good😅 They come up for sale for 2500 ish every so often now, I'm very tempted to get one to tidy up for a bit of a fun project and to use as a back up/second machine to the slanetrac 😅🤷‍♂️

Not Arb work but what a pair these 2 make! Yanmar micro and slanetrac dumper. The slanetrac was bought new back in February with no work lined up for it, but I was ready to buy my first financed machine and it was what made most sense. Its been an absolute god send and I don't know what I'd have done without it since it arrived! Approximately 100 tons out of a back garden in 2 easy days, then another 15 as an extra a couple of days later. The last couple of pictures are spreading 21 tons of Type 1, using the digger, muck truck, slanetrac and whacker plate, which all fit on the trailer in a legal load👌

I has to have a tidy up back on New Year's day as there just wasn't enough room to get in and out the shed anymore! So I parked everything that's in this yard (the actual things that make money- diggers, dumpers and ifors are at the other yard😅🤦‍♂️) in the sun in the field while I sorted out the shed. Hopefully they'll all get more use this year but I doubt it! I really should sell the whole lot and buy another digger and dumper, but I know I wont😅😅

It will be fine, never going to win any awards for speed, loaded or unloaded (although I did get pulled for speeding in mine- a 130 with a chip box- last year😅😅) . The benefit of the defender over most 4x4s is you can safely pop it into low on the road if needed. There are various mods you can do to get more power out of it, as discussed above, but I took the simple, if drastic, option of dropping a TD5 engine in mine. It didn't need it but we wanted to have a go at it and it's so far so good, we're aiming for 180bhp to start with. Long term I'm looking for 215- 2 more than my 2021 Ranger 😅😅😅 but that will take a bit of thought to do with long term reliability.