GA Groundcare

Great to watch on telly (so much shite on these days), big fan of Guy too. They created a pretty cool "big fast thing" utilising a few tractor parts and re designing everything to look similar to a Fastrac. It is not a tractor though, no hydraulics, no linkage, pick up hitch, PTO, spools etc etc. Appreciate you don't need all of what I've mentioned to make a tractor but you at least need a few.

A heavy nose weight can make a Defender look awful with its soft rear coils. The other problem is when the back is squat down low and the lack of weight on the front wheels the steering is very light and the front wheels can lock up very, very easily. You can "get away with it" more so with air suspension We try to get is as well balanced as possible. Not always easy. Vehicles can be tricky as they are obviously nose heavy and long. Something like that E Class estate would want a 16ft trailer to get the car back far enough. We used to have a 200TDI Defender, we had the fuel pump wound up, front mount intercooler, boost pin, silicone boost pipes etc. The injection pump was the limiting factor being on its max. Towing something like a 3T tracked chipper/plant trailer you'd be going up an average hill and go from 4th - 3rd - 2nd and be sat on the limit in 2nd. But it wouldn't pull 3rd. Even before the remap on our Puma it'll accelerate up the hills with a full load. The 200/300 maybe an engine you can repair yourself on the side of the road and for that its great but for actual proper work its crap.

Not overloaded, but definitely up towards the towing capacity of our Defender yesterday. Still pulled uphill like a dream. Re map on the 2.4 Puma made the world of difference.

Give the telehandler info to this company. They specialise in old fork lifts. Not dealt with them in the region of 10 years but they used to be really helpful. They are based in Tetbury, Glos. Great Exportations : Experts in Matbro, JCB and Sanderson Parts WWW.GREATEXPORTATIONS.COM Great Exportations provide genuine and alternative parts for Matbro, JCB, Sanderson and many other brands of...

What is it off? Sanderson / Matbro?

The GM CS100 blade screws are torqued to 27nm. Even then after being in for a year they can be tricky to extract. I doubt other gravity chippers are *that* far apart. Mr Kipling, what was the torque setting on yours? Always make sure your blade back and drum / flywheel face is super clean before fitting. A bit of dirt plus winding the screws in too tight could easily be the cause of a cracked blade. Blob of copper ease on each screw too

All the Jensen UK dealers buy from TH White... Might as well go straight to source?

Build quality wise not really much wrong with them but not a chipper for a tree surgeon.

We have heard rumours of a MK3 Quad Chip. How far along that is, we don’t know.

Don't quote us.... But in the diesel GreenMech range the following will probably happen. Arborist / ArbTrak 150 34hp turbo diesel, Arborist / Arbtrak 200 45hp turbo diesel, SafeTrak will continue to be built until Summer 2020 or until they run out of stocked engines. From that point on, the Arborist 150 will only be available in 25/26hp. An option that is already available and sold largely in Europe. The ArbTrak 150 may get discontinued due to the Evo 165 on tracks now available. Arborist / ArbTrak 200, and all SafeTrak / SureTrak models will go Tier V and have clean burn / DPF fitted. The price on those will be going up due to the cost of engines. That's across the board no matter what make of chipper you purchase. The Evo models are already compliant so no change in that range. As the Arborist 150 34hp already has a wet weight of 749kg, building it with clean burn /DPF will tip the scales over 750kg and it'll price itself out of the market to many. Seriously though, if anyone is thinking of changing a larger road tow or tracked machine in the next 6 months I would get on and get the wheels in motion. Things can be done down the finance route and money is pretty cheap at the moment. Financing a pre DPF 2019 / early 2020 SafeTrak 19-28 will probably be in the region of an outright purchase on a Tier 5 SafeTrak 19-28....

Its more in the design of the heavier flywheel than just a heavy flywheel. Take the 8" petrol Bearcat petrol chipper for example (or any of the larger Bearcat chippers). Massive flywheel, supposed to be a 8" capacity, 20hp petrol engine. Relies on the flywheel inertia to keep going. End result is feed it more than 4" branch and once the flywheel slows down it takes about three days to get back up to speed. There is obviously parameters and a carefully calculated engine hp / torque, pulley gearing size and flywheel weight to get right.

Go GreenMech ? Or, at least get a demo!

Charles (ArbRep) I believe has shut the business and gone back to South Africa. TH White are the UK importer for Jensen. Bill Johnson heads up their import side. Where in the UK are you?

From the GM range. The Arborist 200. 45hp, 8” x 12” infeed. Weighing in 1200kg ish. It has a retail of £22,650 ex vat. It’ll be going up soon due to engine cost increases from emissions.

GM went through many scraped flywheel designs and the Evo was launched around a year after they initially planned. So it was no easy step to get to where the Evo is today. Innovation takes time. Hindsight is easy ? Yes, we understand what they’ve learnt through the Evo on flywheel design is going to be filtered through the range in due course. The SafeTrak and or the SureTrak is hands down the best embankment *tracking* chipper. Don’t think you can find an operator who can say it isn’t... But people just want that but more throughput these days. A swanky, higher performance flywheel in that machine would be the icing on the cake ?

One thing on GreenMechs agenda with the Evo 165 was to recycle the chip around the chamber less. If you imagine the timber enters at 6 o clock with the flywheel spinning counter clockwise (as stood from the infeed) and the chipped material exits at 12 o clock (approx). However, on older wood chippers with fairly basic X style paddle designs the chip wont always exit on its initial half a counter clockwise turn. The chip will be recycled around the flywheel / chamber and then be discharged at some point. (very hard to tell exactly) Being able to feed material in, as I am sure you know is all about getting the material out. The quicker it can be discharged with as little recycling as possible the more efficient the chipper is. Stress control kicking in less etc etc. The Evo flywheel has been in the region of three years in development. We know that older GreenMech 6" machines, TimberWolf TW150's and such like use the air that the flywheel paddles create to blow the chip out the discharge chute into the back of your wagon. The new Evo flywheel design uses the paddles to fling / throw the chip at a very high velocity. As proved in the video I posted a few pages ago. Whether you're a GreenMech fan or not, there is no denying that the Evo chip discharge is impressive.

Not sure if there is any physical engine differences in the old 34/35hp V1505 and the latest 25hp V1505.

Ours had a brand new turbo on purchasing it (with receipts)

On the 2.4 TDCI?

We are a Husqvarna dealer and we use a 135 for cutting up firewood for our heating system. Works fine ?

Imagine trying to deal with your Briggs engine dealer on the issues you had with a "tuned" engine.... Chances are you'd be footing the invoice on the repairs. When out of warranty then fair game. We have just had our Puma Defender remapped from 122hp to 165hp (ish). It has made all the difference when on heavy towing. The itch for 200hp is now strong ?

Ah sorry. For some reason thought you were referring to a turn table on tracks.

When your partner paints as a hobby and you commission her to do a painting for the office wall...

It’s not a standard option available currently. I would imagine they could produce one, whether there is enough call to officially make one and put it in the price list is another question all together. The Quad Trak 160 is a great tool, the Swiss Army knife of chippers. But it is sold in lowish numbers.

Hard to say without knowing his overhead costs. The lads will probably only see the "I can make another £30 + an hour doing it on my own" In our workshops they are paid in the region of that rate, (slightly higher) and we charge out at £45 per hour plus vat. However not very often every hour of said day is chargeable, the employed person is paid for all of the day, the employed person only works 11 months of a 12 month year, they get a pension, fuel coverage to - from home, then your business rates, premises lease, van lease and all your insurances. And that largely all needs to come out of the gross profit on labour. The gross profit margin is very quickly reduced to very little.