I purchased a Bearcat 70554
Chipper/Shredder and two-speed blower last fall. I am using it on my Kubota B2400. I am clearing 2 acres of 12-year-old saplings. (The future site of my garden.) Most of the saplings are tall and straight so they are well suited for a
chipper. I chose this unit since it offered both the capability to chip as well as shred. I wanted the shredder to shred compost and paper for mulch and compost as well as the
chipper to take chip the saplings..
The 70554 can easily chip 4-inch trees. With longer trees (over 8 feet tall) or larger trees, the trees feed a bit too fast for the power available and stall the tractor. I have found that if I support some of the weight of these larger trees and slow down the feed rate it works fine.
I have not been as happy with the blower.
The screen is tough to clean if you have the blower installed. The Blower assembly covers the screen and must be removed to clean or change the screen. After removing the blower the screen comes out easily with two bolts through the bottom. The manual states that the blower should only be used with the
chipper and dry material in the shredder. From my experience, with the blower installed, any moist material in the shredder will clog up the blower and screen. I also had problems with small twigs about 1/8 inch in diameter falling through the shredder hammers and clogging the screen and blower.
The blower assembly also covers the access port used to remove the knives for sharpening. It is hard to understand why this problem exists, the 4 ½ inch port could have been placed anywhere on the path of the knives. If the access port had been placed higher up it would have been fully accessible with the blower installed.
The manual recommends sharpening the knives every 10 hours of chipping. The self-feed will become less reliable as the knives dull. This means after a few days of use the blower must be pulled off for the user to use the access the port. The alternative is to remove and replace the
chipper knives from the top by reaching between the disk and side wall, not a viable technique, my hands are big and clumsy enough that I would almost certainly drop at least one bolt and end up taking off the blower and screen anyway.
So far most of the time I have been running the 70554 I have had the 2-speed blower installed. This spring I will try the shredder (without the blower) with the screen with largest holes to see how it handles wet material, paper, and twigs.
The Blower drive shaft guard, used when the blower is not installed, requires that the drive pulleys for the blower be removed before the guard may be installed. The two pulleys are set on a shaft with a keyway and secured with setscrews. The pulleys must be set to positions to match the pulleys on the blower frame. Removing the pulleys requires a gear puller. Installation requires a hammer (and gear puller) to align them on the shaft. For this tractor neophyte this is a time consuming process.
Bearcat should have either provided a guard, which can cover the pulleys, or used a quick attach technique (e.g. a PTO spline and quick release) for the blower drive.
Either technique would speed up the blower remove/install cycle considerably.
The blower option seems to be a poorly designed afterthought to the well-designed
chipper/shredder.
If you are looking for a dedicated
chipper with integral blower the 74554 is a far better (and more expensive) choice. The 74554 has a hinged cover that provides easier access to the knives. The better access and therefore the faster knife change could be a factor if you use the shredder extensively. It also has hydraulic feed, which will control feed rate, not require that you stand by and monitor the feed and reduce the possibility of kickback. 73454 is the manual feed equivalent model to the 74554.
Ed