Chipper Agriease WC42G Chipper Review Please

[Hilbilly]

Thanks John, that is some very valuable info and I'm glad to hear there was no damage to your tractor. I will check or replace my shear bolt. I had a similar issue with my brush mower and ended up buying some 1/2" steel rod from a steel supply shop and making my own shear bolts. I can't remember if the cold rolled or hot rolled is softer, but I got the softer one. I think it is the hot rolled stuff.

I've got about 10 hrs on my chipper so far and there are some minor issues with it. One is the deflector chute cannot be used properly because the deflector has been improperly welded to the main body. The other is that the bearing lock rings came loose and the flywheel developed some side play. I reset the bearing locks and all has been fine since then.

I have been chipping green cottonwood and using that for garden mulch. The cottonwood doesn't have other uses for me, so I've been chipping up to 4" trees. Now I wish I had a bigger chipper for doing bigger cottonwood. But the chipper has done great with this wood and the knives are still super sharp. I too get a lot of small twigs that come out the chute but have only had the chute plug twice and I think it is because the deflector is mounted wrong. I could take this to the dealer and have him fix it under warranty and may do that yet or just wait until it is out of warranty and fix it myself.

The chips I get are quite thick and I have adjusted the knife / ledger plate gap to 1/32" (to the closest knife) and still get the big chips, about 1/2" thick. I have come to realize that this is due to the gap between the flywheel and the knife edge, not the gap between the knife and the ledger plate.

I found the twigs to be a nuisance for garden mulch and just decide to trim branches off the trunk if I wanted to use the chips in the garden. Otherwise I just chip the whole tree and it works great, at least on cottonwood and the smaller pine trees I've run through it so far.

I still think this is a good buy considering the cost of the same "name brand" unit.

 

[DavesTractor]

You can't beat customer reviews. John brings up a good point, the shear bolt needs to work. I noticed that on our shaft in the shear area there is heavy paint on all surfaces. In the right circumstances, paint can become somewhat of a glue. I think we will start pulling the shear bolt and making sure the shear section of the shaft will spin freely, then re-installing the bolt. There is a grease point on the shear part of the shaft as well. Obviously this is a compromise, it needs to be stout enough to not shear needlessly....but it needs to shear before stalling the tractor.

I have a 125 HP Brush Bandit 250XP, it's serious unit that will gobble up a 12"-14" tree. But I was a little disappointed that it will shoot out some small sticks and stems. I have my blade to anvil clearance set pretty tight, about a business card thickness. I think these little sticks are passing through the area between the blade and flywheel. They are supposed to do that of course in little chips, but some of them get in just the right position and get a free pass. I think that is the nature of disc chippers, but I am no expert.

 

[John Dougherty]

Dave, I want some of that paint! If it can hold that PTO together it's got to be some strong stuff. Just kidding. I concur with you and think that may be the issue. Paint+bolt=strong connection. I will be breaking mine apart and starting over with the knowledge that the paint is not gluing it together.

So where is that paint from? My house looks like it could use a little touch up! Good stuff from all contributors on the subject.

 

[John Dougherty]

Hilbilly,
Good post and you are welcome, pretty scary! I am envious of your species of wood to chip. We have oak, all kinds and breeds of it. One of the more knarly (?) is the Live Oak. It tends to grow in kind of a spiral and doesn't like to split easily. One of it's problems is that it doesn't shed it's leaves. As a result when we get one of our wet snow storms (at least we used to), then the darn things load up with snow and the tops break. As a result, the tree sends up twenty new tops. They should be great for chipping, but they do have a lot of leaves and twigs. Ugh! In the good old days we just took our shotguns and blasted the snow out of the trees. I know, pretty weird in today's world, but it actually was effective. I couldn't hit a duck, but trees don't move and a pretty easy shot.

 

[TerryR]

Reports like John's make me glad I got a chipper that uses belt drive. I'm not sure what operational advantage that provides, but is does provide protection for the tractor - the belts begin to slip before my tractor stalls.

Terry

 

[Hilbilly]

I just checked my chipper and initially thought the shear bolt had broken since there was some play in the 2 plates where the shear bolt is. I took the shear bolt out and can see where there is some deformation on the threads where it appears to getting ready to break. One thing I noticed was that there was a lot of grease between the 2 plates (probably from me greasing everything before using it for the firs time) and that allowed the plates to move, even though the bolt hasn't broken: yet. Like JD says there are no markings on the bolt so it is not possible to determine its strength. Since mine is showing signs of getting ready to break and the plates move freely, I will continue to use the bolt that came with it.

John D I think your dealer should contact the supplier and let him know about this issue. The supplier / manufacturer is responsible for making sure the shear bolt design and installation is suitable for the intended purpose and if there are issues with it they should address it before some serious damage occurs to someone's tractor. If the shear bolt doesn't break and the tractor does instead, I would go after the manufacturer for all repair costs, despite what your dealer says. I'm sure a judge would agree that the manufacturer is responsible for the damage caused by his faulty design / construction.

What did you and your dealer come up with as far as resolving the issue. I would let the dealer solve it. If you replace the shear bolt with something else I think that would void your warranty, or at least leave the door open for the supplier to deny coverage for any damage that may be caused to, or by, the chipper. Just a thought.

 

[John Dougherty]

I just checked my chipper and initially thought the shear bolt had broken since there was some play in the 2 plates where the shear bolt is. I took the shear bolt out and can see where there is some deformation on the threads where it appears to getting ready to break. One thing I noticed was that there was a lot of grease between the 2 plates (probably from me greasing everything before using it for the firs time) and that allowed the plates to move, even though the bolt hasn't broken: yet. Like JD says there are no markings on the bolt so it is not possible to determine its strength. Since mine is showing signs of getting ready to break and the plates move freely, I will continue to use the bolt that came with it.

John D I think your dealer should contact the supplier and let him know about this issue. The supplier / manufacturer is responsible for making sure the shear bolt design and installation is suitable for the intended purpose and if there are issues with it they should address it before some serious damage occurs to someone's tractor. If the shear bolt doesn't break and the tractor does instead, I would go after the manufacturer for all repair costs, despite what your dealer says. I'm sure a judge would agree that the manufacturer is responsible for the damage caused by his faulty design / construction.

What did you and your dealer come up with as far as resolving the issue. I would let the dealer solve it. If you replace the shear bolt with something else I think that would void your warranty, or at least leave the door open for the supplier to deny coverage for any damage that may be caused to, or by, the chipper. Just a thought.

Hilbilly,
Dave is the guy I met with and talked about this issue. He is not my original dealer, but he has become a friend and I think his input is very important. There is no problem with going with a softer bolt in this regard, it's just a crap shoot as to what will work. Dave is onto something when he talks about removing the paint. It may solve the problem or at least reveal the hardness # of the bolt. You are right to be concerned as to the warranty issue. It scares the heck out of me. I found it interesting that you did not discover a # for the bolt hardness. I'm sure that you would agree that this is pretty amazing considering the implications. As to who is on the hook for such things, I would say that it is a problem worth avoiding in the first place. That was the purpose of my post and hopefully will be useful to those in our position. That is the beauty of these forums, helping others before they have a problem. It would seem that we are the only ones with this issue, but I see that there have been several visits to this thread since we started it. I'm pretty sure that Dave has already contacted the manufacturer by now. At least he is being proactive to protect his customers. I know that he is concerned.

 

[RalphVa]

Looks good. Wonder how easy it is to maintain. Please report this later.

I have a MacKissic TPH-122, a 3 1/2" chipper but also has hammers. Very easy to maintain, and these are a high maintenance item. Once owned a TroyBilt Tomahawk (not for the tractor but took same 3 1/2" stuff and built similarly), it was an absolute beast to maintain.

So far, I've rotated the hammers 3 times (EASY), sharpened the chipper blade several times (EASY, with right tools) and replaced the only non-zerk bearing (again, easy).

Rotating the hammers on the TroyBilt was about a 4 hour job, and you had to have new spacers and keepers every time.

Ralph

 

[John Dougherty]

Ralph,
That's interesting in my case. I had originally considered a MacKissic chipper. They sure look cool online. My take was I could get a PTO chipper with a tractor that was more powerful. That tractor thing, I guess. It did look like the product was pretty useful though. In addition to the ability to use a tractor to power the unit I thought that I didn't want the chips to shoot out onto a tarp, which seemed to be the case. I shoot mine into a trailer and handle them 'once'. Is that the case? Not really, it's a pain to rake them out of the trailer into the pile. Anyway, it sure looked like the real deal. I bet that your chips are more uniform and useful. Thanks for anymore info.

 

[Hilbilly]

John D, I figured Dave wasn't your sales dealer from your earlier post and he has provided some good input to this thread.

I didn't try to get the paint off the bolt head as there was a blob of weld material on the end. There are some sort of markings on the bolt but they are not legible because of the weld. My drive shaft did not have an excess of paint on it and the 2 plates move freely so I don't think I have the same issue as you. At least not the paint issue but I may have a shear bolt issue, if the bolt is too strong.

I built a box that mounts on my pallet forks and take that with me to where I will be chipping. I put the box on the ground and then direct the chips into the box. When I'm done I pick up the box with the pallet forks and return to the garden and dump the chips into it. The box has a hinge on the front face that I open up. I'd take a pic but its raining.