aspenarb

It depends on what you are doing Bill, a rake and hydraulic thumb on a machine can group up/load brash much quicker than just a grab/rotator.Grab/rotator is a great tool if everything is ready to be grabbed. Bob

Just about any type of grab on a small excavator is useful.I once knocked up a hitch bracket for a small grab on a three ton machine, it grabbed off the breaker line and it swivelled but never had a rotator. You kind of adapt to whatever is in front of you. Bob

LG still out there doing its thing, raking out and burning rather a lot of Gorse atm

Its a twin pump on these chippers, one section of the pump does most of the work (the feed rollers and one tracking motor), the other pump section is only ever called for when tracking. You could easily eliminate the pump by swapping the pipes over on the pump, you may need to snip off a few cable ties but it would be a quick and easy way to see if the slow track is then on the other side of the machine. Bob

The best hire is the non mechanical stuff. Heras fencing, RPA/Z protection gear, tm signage/lights, ground boards,welfare units etc. Count it out and count it back in, for any losses or damage charge new for old.The Heras can go out for months/years at a time. Bob

Its only an old clunker of a thing but it does a good job.

I think of the hollow ground as a knife and the flat ground as an axe, the hollow ground are better on stringy stuff. I converted an old mower grinder, the grinding head can rotate on the upstand to do both hollow or flat ground.

I got these about twenty years ago, mainly for the stretch boots on battery cable crimps.

There was a thread on here recently about doing battle with replacement HT caps. These hellerman mini boot stretchers are the nuts, cant get any easier than this. Link Easy to get orientation right before releasing.

Cut an old wheelbarrow tyre in half. Bob

Yep, but only on here a few times week since the place turned so facebookish. Bob

If you are running a few vans, trailers, chippers and plant its worth kitting up to do some of your own tyre repairs/changes. Not talking about fitting new sets, just repairs and changes. Older s/h tyre machines are cheap, one below was only £250, doesn't take long to recover that when you have three guys stood there looking at a flat tyre waiting to get out of the yard. These bead cheaters are also cheap and take the grief out of bead seating, about £80

Needs must and all that.

That, said it would probably cope with blowing out saws. Bob

I bought one of those cheap 12v pumps to run the air solenoids/actuators for some pto equipment in my service truck. Dont think it would live long running flat out.

You need to look at the max run time on any of these compressors, some are only good for about three minutes before needing to cool off , something like the tmax is good for forty five minutes. The latter will cope with inflating tractor//truck tyres and pumping up a decent size air receiver without melting.

London work is about to get very expensive,its a bit of a logistical nightmare at best and about to get a lot worse. That ulez creeping out to the m25 is going to change things. Bob.

Most of our work is within a sixty mile rad of base. One of our lads travels an hour a day to get to the yard, if we happen to be sixty miles the wrong way for him he has a very long day, that said we are sometimes on his doorstep. Bob

Milemarkers blurb reckons on 3 gallons per minute flow rate and not very much in the way of psi in hydraulic terms. LAYER LOAD PSI GPM 1 6700 900 3 1 7800 1000 3 1 9100 1100 3 1 10100 1200 3 1 11000 1300 3 1 12000 1400 3 One of these in the pressure line from the pump will measure pressure vs flow, most decent ag engineers will have one. Takes away all the guesswork.

It would be worth sticking a gauge on it and running a few simple tests before playing parts darts.Could be something simple wrong with it like a control valve or a stuck pressure relief valve. Bob

A bit like all the big chippers,mogs,monster tractors and timber trailers, there is so much of this gear purchased and parked up around here,a lot of it doesn't turn a wheel more than once a year and that would be because its in the way. Way too many folk buying gear they think they want instead of thinking about what they actually need, there are rather a lot of very expensive and rapidly depreciating yard ornaments out there. Just saying. Bob

An Aebi with a flail on the front is a fair tool for banks mowing, if they get to a point when they start sliding down sideways you turn them around they are virtually unstoppable romping up and down. I still have mine festering in a shed, a relic from motorway bank clearance work. They also have pto front and rear so they are not a one trick pony. Bob One of these

Drilling/helicoiling is ok if you take your time and set up properly and put a bit of thought into it, stabbing away with a drill will end in tears. The drill will need a guide bush if in a blind hole or jig plate.Had to do this lot on the truck a while back, not a single bolt was going to undo, all forty of them had become one with the hub and the heads had to cut off with the gas axe. Made up a drill jig with dowls to locate on the new disc.

If you are drilling and have access to a lathe @openspaceman was on the money with a drilling bush, next best thing are these two bob hole transfer punches, a bit of a life save if you want to centre on a broken bolt/stud deep in a hole. Bob

New belts need to be ran for a while and brought up to temperature to allow them to bed in before thinking about final tensioning, I always give them half an hour at full revs then allow to cool and re-tension. Touched on this multi belt malarkey on machines before, what's more important is to find a supplier that can supply matched sets of belts all the same length. Off the shelf belts from various batches from the same manufacturer can vary + or- 3mm in length which can and does throw any attempt at proper belt tensioning down the pan, belts from the same batch will all be exactly the same length. I have tamed our local belt supplier and he understands. Bob.