OM don't even ask to borrow my chipper!

[stehansen]

Since you dissed my chipper the other day I had to do some filming today. I want you to know that my feelings are offically hurt.

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I think my hired man may be sending secret signals to aliens by waving branches.

[Frans]

Looks like it's yellow...

Sure you didn't steal that chipper from DotPalm? :P

[stehansen]

Shhhh!

[sotc]

:popcorn:

[Old Monkey]

OK, OK. Your 1250 rocks. The one I used was beat up and performing poorly.

[stehansen]

It's all about the blades I'm telling you.

[Old Monkey]

I didn't have any choice on his chipper. I had to use it as it came. We are going try to do next weeks full load of work chipper-less. Preston said he'd rather cut down the truck than use that chipper again. My chipper is in limbo. I talked to the guy at the dealership yesterday and he said he would prefer to replace the engine but that he needs to do a cost vs. benefit analysis to show the company that new would be cheaper than a rebuilt. If they go for it I might have a chipper for Christmas. In the meantime we'll just suffer.

[stehansen]

Yeah if it plugs on everything, it is easier to throw the brush into the truck.

[Old Monkey]

I am the King of cutting down brush once more. No one seems to want to take my throne.

[stehansen]

The only time I didn't use a chipper I stuffed the brush in my trailer with my tractor/loader. Back when I farmed we were allowed to burn and had a brush fork on a tractor and would push it in a big pile and light 'er up. Sometimes if it was hard to start we would even put some old tires in there and pour diesel on them to get the fire started. Talk about pollution.

[stehansen]

Is renting a chipper too pricey?

[Old Monkey]

A hair under $1,000/week. My days are in the $600-$1200 range so I am not certain I want to rent. The only decent rental is a BC 1000 at the Vermeer dealership two towns over.

[No_Bivy]

Hey, OM. Did your chipper have a murphy switch on it. Shuts it downs if oil pressure drops?

[vharrison]

Your chipper rocks Stehansen. I love to watch a well functioning chipper blow the mulch into the back of the truck. VRRRRRRRRRM!

That looks like it is making awsome mulch. Will you give it away?

[Chisel Tooth]

I don't get it Darin, if it was a manufactures defect, it should be covered by warranty and he should just short block it. He still has to have a rep come out to ok it, and that should only take a few days, a week at the most. Good luck I hope you get it back soon.
See Ya
Mike

[vharrison]

I don't get it Darin, if it was a manufactures defect, it should be covered by warranty and he should just short block it. He still has to have a rep come out to ok it, and that should only take a few days, a week at the most. Good luck I hope you get it back soon.
See Ya
Mike

This is exactly what I was warning Darin about. There is alot of margin between a rebuilt and a new one, right? Trust me Darin, they can go to either spectrum of the margin or they would not do the analysis. The key is that if you don't agree with the analysis, you can voice your opinon. Go as far up the ladder as you have to, remembering that you will get alot further being nice. It took John quite a bit of time on the phone, with quite a few people, and I don't remember him being an ass on the phone, he just believed he should be treated fairly. Assume they can and will give you a new one, which is the better end of the spectrum of margin!!

Good luck kiddo! We are pulling for you!

[No_Bivy]

Something similar happened to me with my 1590. Welds kept cracking. They tried to fix it. Finally I called the head guy at Brush Bandit. A guy drove down from michigan with a new one for me to use. They took mine back, totally rebuilt/repaint and brought it back. Took over a month. I insisted on a chipper while they repaired. They came through. I had to bypass the local dealer. they wanted to string it a long:X

[vharrison]

Something similar happened to me with my 1590. Welds kept cracking. They tried to fix it. Finally I called the head guy at Brush Bandit. A guy drove down from michigan with a new one for me to use. They took mine back, totally rebuilt/repaint and brought it back. Took over a month. I insisted on a chipper while they repaired. They came through. I had to bypass the local dealer. they wanted to string it a long:X

AWSOME! That is the kind of service that you have to expect and insist on.

[Chisel Tooth]

Gigi Kohler is pretty good about warranty claims, they understand that this machine being down is costing someone money. My Kohler rep usually showed up in 2 to 3 days, I never had a claim refused. This engine is a canidate for a shortblock, just because the engineers would want to look this thing over and see if they have a bigger problem.
See Ya
Mike

[vharrison]

This engine is a canidate for a shortblock, just because the engineers would want to look this thing over and see if they have a bigger problem.
See Ya
Mike


I agree, they should look at from every angle, for the betterment of the future design and all. It may take some time, to jump through the hoops, letting this one and that one give their opinion, but it will be worth it in the long run. You don't necessarily want to go for the quick fix if more evaluation will be better in the long run. No Bivy's situation went on for a month, but sounds like it was worth the wait. Darin, you are a patient man, so take your time and let them make it right.

[Old Monkey]

My chipper does have a Murphy switch and it did shut off just a half second before it froze up.

[Frans]

We have a friend here who grows veggies. He just bought a brand new tractor $75,000.
The oil sending unit failed, the warning light failed, got an oil leak from the pan not being tightened properly at the factory and the tractor died.

They jerked him around for long enough so he lost a crop becouse they didn't believe he was owed a loaner.

Horror story that I hope doesn't happen to you. He had the tractor for less than a month

[sotc]

cat has a huge research and development plant/budget, most likely they will want it back even if all they find out is the filter manufacturer built a bad filter that came apart

[No_Bivy]

My chipper does have a Murphy switch and it did shut off just a half second before it froze up.

Weird. Before that was the oil pressure pretty consistent?

[stehansen]

Your chipper rocks Stehansen. I love to watch a well functioning chipper blow the mulch into the back of the truck. VRRRRRRRRRM!

That looks like it is making awsome mulch. Will you give it away?

Thanks Gigi! This time of year I will dump it in my walnut orchard and spread it out and disc it into the ground. Normally I would pay $7/load to dump it and it would then be reground and be recycled into cattle bedding. The thing I like about doing that is at the jobsite I don't have to separate any wood which is too large to chip I can just put it all in the truck together. There are some dairies locally which will take chips but then I would have to take my pickup or something along and separate the wood from the chips. As my stick waving compadre doesn't have a DL I usually just take the truck unless I have large amounts of wood to dispose of. On the off chance that the tree would be good firewood then I would do that but most of my removals seem to be cottonwood, modesto ash, fruitless mulberry and other trees that aren't very good firewood. That is my stepdaughter feeding the chipper.
Darin, when my chipper was down with the bearings out on the disk I went without rather than rent one also, as it was $250/day.

[Stumper]

Steve, Fruitless mulberry is EXCELLENT firewood.

[stehansen]

Steve, Fruitless mulberry is EXCELLENT firewood.

No way. I assumed that because it grew so fast it wouldn't be any good.

[Ax-Man]

I may have missed something somewhere but from the drift of this thread it sounds like Darin new chipper went down Big Time.

Did the engine blow???

If it did this is scary as I'm looking into updating our chipper, haven't found anything I am happy with yet for what I think we can afford.

What engine is in your chipper Darin, is it a Deere ??? Most of the newer larger Morbarks seem to have those in them .

I am looking at maybe getting a Vermeer 1400 with a Cat engine. I don't know if it is a true Cat engine or one of those Cat-Perkins hybrids that I was reading about somewhere. A true Cat is ok but those Cat Perkins have been trouble.

[Jonseredbred]

The 1400 is junk. They have had nothing but problems with them. Everyone I know who has bought on has had alot of downtime, anf the machine is completely wore out at 1500hrs. Bearing failures, drum failures, stree cracks.

Ugggg, chrap. Be carefull.

[stehansen]

OM's chipper had a Cat engine and judging by the size, it may very well be the Perkins/Cat engine. It had an oil pump failure if I remember right. I've had pretty good luck with Perkins engines. I had one that I salvaged from a swather and installed it on a deep well pump and it had about 6,000 hrs on it when I got it. It went to a little over 16,000 hrs before it also had a oil pump failure.

[Ax-Man]

Thanks for the info Jred. The only reason I am looking at them is because our city has one and as we were taking down this very large tree I got the chance to help the city guys feed some big long limbs. The Vermeer was quite smooth at taking that material in with those vertical feed wheels compared to horizontial wheels we have on our Morbark.

I have seen the Vermeers demoed at the dealers open house, personally I didn't like what I heard. They seem to chip hard compared to Morbark.

My thing is we have to a winch because now that we have a GRCS we taking bigger chunks out of the trees. The Vermeer I was looking at was set -up with one. I think I will stick with Morbark, our dealer had a nice 13 they were rebuilding and they have a winch they can add to it. All I have to do is come up with more buckos. :roll:

[Ax-Man]

Steve, That is what I have always heard about a true Perkins, good engines that no one ever had anything bad to say about them. I personally have never had one but the few people I know that have them in their tractors have always liked them.

I am not a Perkins expert but hasn't Cat made those engines for years ???

Darin, that has really got to suck, buy a brand new machine and have an engine go down the tubes like that. I hope all this works out for you. I have been down this same road a few times but with no warranty or dealer support. It hurts big time. Not getting work done as fast plus having to shell out money and the lost time and job cancellations.

[Old Monkey]

Mine has an 86 HP Cat Diesel Engine. From what I've heard it is probably a Perkins that has been renamed.

I love my my Morbark Twister 12 and would very definitely recommend it.

[No_Bivy]

cat is perkins. Perkins block, cat head. mine works great. How soon is a murphy switch supposed to shut those things down....anyone know?

[Old Monkey]

When the pressure dips below 20 it shuts down.

[stehansen]

My cousin told me that the deal is that Cat didn't make any motors that small and thought it would be more economical to partner up with someone who already did rather than re-invent the wheel so to speak.

[Al Smith]

Steve, Fruitless mulberry is EXCELLENT firewood. Mulberry is a second cousin to osage orange ,one of the highest rated firewoods btu wise. Either one cuts relatively easy when green but turn to iron once they dry.

[Stumper]

Al. Right. There is a fruitless version of Paper Mulberry that is pretty punk but common Fruitless Mulberry is Mora Alba. (White Mulberry,) Both white and Red Mulberries have very dense wood-On a par with White Oak. Osage is tad denser.

[Jonseredbred]

Darin, you can borrow my chipper anytime.

I got to tell you to demand a new motor, not a rebuild.

I bought a leftover 1990 Morbark 290 brand new in '91 it had a 80 HP (or so) Hercules Diesel in it. At 20 hrs it blew up, the dealer BS'd me into rebuilding it, it blew up at 50 hrs. Same thing, a crankshaft failure.

They wanted to rebuild it again, I said no. They said they could not put in a new motor. I took the block to a machine shop and they confirmed what I had already thought, the main journals were out of whack.

Armed with the info, my dealer finally confessed that they knew the Hercules were a problem and Morbark had discontinued them. They said they were pressured by the manufacturer's rep to only fix the problem.

In very short order, my chipper showed up with a new Cummins on it, new sheet metal and all. They took an engine/PTO assembly off of a new chipper that was in stock.

Demand a new engine, you paid for a new chipper and you should have a new chipper.

[stehansen]

I guess you can borrow my chipper now OM since you said it rocks. Pretty safe since you are 600 + miles away. Truthfully I've never used any other chipper so I can't compare I just know that mine will work with sharp blades and that with dull blades, it blows big time.

[RIVERRAT]

The 1400 is junk. They have had nothing but problems with them. Everyone I know who has bought on has had alot of downtime, anf the machine is completely wore out at 1500hrs. Bearing failures, drum failures, stree cracks.

Ugggg, chrap. Be carefull.
Early on this may have been a fact. But the place I used to work has no less than 5 of them. One had a few issues with a switch. But there have been no bearing problems with any of them. This includes 2 that where taken to St. Louis with 800 the other with over 1000hrs. For 2 1/2 weeks they where both run from sun up until sundown. Only shut off for lunch break.

They throw beautiful chips & eat any thing quickly with in their range thats loaded into them....
But I have heard from plenty like yourself that dont care for them.