Hayden,
The Salsco is a 6"x12" feed. I haven't seen that on any other
chipper. After using it for about a month now, I've really grown to appreciate this. I've only had to limb a couple of pieces of stock so far. I also find that crooked stock seems to automagically rotate so that it goes through the throat. I've also noticed that it can handle a couple of smaller stuff running in parallel.
On the reverser - for me, definitely. It only takes one experience having something get stuck and having to disassemble part of the machine to get it out.
Some other things to consider (no order, just a quick brain dump):
- How heavy is it? My old Troybilt
chipper kept cracking the welds (so does my Troybilt rider...).
- How heavy is the rotor? Rotor mass helps smooth out the load on the tractor.
- How many blades does it have?
- How many bed knives does it have?
- Can you adjust the gap between the blades and bed knives?
- How well does it discharge. One dealer/rental agency told me they switched from Patu to Salsco largely because the Salsco almost never plugged up. (OK - I plugged mine up last weekend - still not sure what I did differently)
- If it has a hydraulic feed, do it use tractor hydraulics or does it have its own pump.
- How much PTO HP does your tractor have? Chippers use a LOT. I've almost stalled my L48 when eating a big log at full feed speed. I now slow it down a bit on the big stuff and run it fast on the little stuff.
- What color does it come in? /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif
- Oh, and all the standard stuff about dealers, support and what are you actually going to do with it.
This would all be a heck of a lot easier if you could actually demo them - I ended up taking the "buy the biggest one you can affort route".
BTW - Salsco now makes a smaller model, the 824. It has a 4"x8" infeed opening. The blades are 7"x4.5". IIRC, the price quoted from Chappel was $4200.
-david