A Quick Review of my New Piranha Bar

[W8BYA]

My initial intention of getting a piranha bar was to keep ware from eating up the cutting edge of the bucket moving snow. It has worked well for that, however you will get a quick lesson in learning to keep the bucket level on the frozen gravel drive way.

I have done a little digging with it. Some dirt out of a bank on the edge of the pasture to make a bunker for a target stand. That dirt went to level a spot to install more raised garden beds for Sweetie.

This attachment has been well worth the hassle with shipping and customs to this part of the north.

Yeah I can imagine you doing some serious damage to the gravel road with one of these. I just took mine off a couple days ago for the winter since it took less then 5 minutes. After so many years of recovering gravel off the sides of the road and on my grass I have learned real quick not to get too aggressive with the PB or even the rear blade or even the normal FEL !

But thus far this thing has completely transformed my tractor. I got done in several days what would easily take me several seasons given the size of small trees, brush, prickers, and saplings.

 

[Imold]

The Tamers fit over the piranha bar so now I can leave the bar on all year round if I want.

 

[W8BYA]

The Tamers fit over the piranha bar so now I can leave the bar on all year round if I want.
View attachment 629315

I did not know both could be left on at the same time, thanks ! I really do need to get a set of tamers to keep me from destroying the grass each winter.

 

[WoodDuck]

I got the PB earlier this fall. It's an absolute BEAST on bush honeysuckle. Rolls them out roots and all if you know how to use it. If you hit the base of a bush at ground level, sometimes it wants to shear it off. If you hit the bush base a few inches above the ground, then lift/curl as you continue to drive forward, it will tip the whole bush over and uproot it. Then just push it wherever you want, or come back with a grapple to pile them up for burning. The Piranha Bar is excellent at biting into the brush, preventing it from just rolling underneath the bucket as you're driving forwards. I'm not a very experienced operator at all, and trying to clear out brush with just the smooth bucket edge that came on my tractor was slow and frustrating for me. I would end up having to make several passes to get all the brush cleared off a given area. Sometimes I would get too much angle or down force on the bucket trying to keep the dang brush from rolling underneath it again, and I would start cutting several inches of dirt below grade before I realized what was happening. Then had to dump the dirt and brush back into the hole I'd just made, and try to smooth it all back out again. Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!!! After installing the Piranha Bar these issues were totally gone; I didn't have to try and "scrape" the bucket along the ground. The bar is so aggressive, I could run it a few inches above grade, and brush wouldn't roll under the bucket anymore. The teeth would grab everything and just rip it out of the ground as I drove forward. I would never try to clear brush with a smooth bucket edge again after using this Piranha----period. It's just that good!
I also bought some Edge Tamers for my tractor after buying the tooth bar, but I haven't tried those out yet. Other people seem to like them though.

 

[Imold]

I did not know both could be left on at the same time, thanks ! I really do need to get a set of tamers to keep me from destroying the grass each winter.

Not sure if it will work on all buckets but it did on mine, one person had his piranha bar made with a tooth cut out on each end so his tamer fit on.

 

[Imold]

Howdy Jim. Yes that is my call sign. It looks like you have been having as much fun with your PB as I have been with mine. It just amazed me how it transformed the capabilities of the tractor. My mistake was getting such a wide bucket....72" is huge making it hard to do anything but push snow with. But with the PB all that changed.

I have been a tech for last eight years, I was involved with the local HAM club and right after I got my Tech License I suffered a big heart attack and had a pacemaker installed and since then I have been trigger shy and have not preceded on to my General. My call sign is KD0NSC and my shack radio is a TS2000 with a 10-60/80 dipole plus 2 meter and 6 meter antennas, I have a few portable car units and handheld units, my health has kept me from going further being the meetings are about 26 miles from me and I never know how I am going to feel. I really would like to get my General but it is all about how I feel and my pacemaker, don’t need any frequency interference with my pacemaker hahaha...

73’s.

 

[W8BYA]

Hey there WoodDuck. Your experiences matched mine to a "T". Mine is off for the winter since I do not have a pair of tamers yet.

 

[W8BYA]

I have been a tech for last eight years, I was involved with the local HAM club and right after I got my Tech License I suffered a big heart attack and had a pacemaker installed and since then I have been trigger shy and have not preceded on to my General. My call sign is KD0NSC and my shack radio is a TS2000 with a 10-60/80 dipole plus 2 meter and 6 meter antennas, I have a few portable car units and handheld units, my health has kept me from going further being the meetings are about 26 miles from me and I never know how I am going to feel. I really would like to get my General but it is all about how I feel and my pacemaker, don’t need any frequency interference with my pacemaker hahaha...

73’s.

GM Jim. Always great to meet another ham on the group here. Glad you are on the mend......I have a thread going on related to the RFI I have observed once I installed a set of inexpensive Asian LED work lights. I had over 30+ years in the defense industry working with RF (tempest engineer) so the RFI is pretty easy for me to understand and tackle. Anyway, my dad had a pacemaker and I would talk to him and his cardio doctor specifically about pacemakers in RF fields. The bottom line is they have come a LONG way since they were first developed and they are no where near susceptible the way they were.

Original unit you had to be careful even being near a microwave or driving right by some AM radio station towers, or near an arc welder, etc etc. Not any more. The makers have designed them to be shielded. Also, knowing 3 variables you can calculate with a pretty high degree of confidence of what the RF field from your antennas will be. You need to know the type of antenna, your distance from the antenna, and your power level. It also helps to know what modulation you will be using (SSB, or a digital mode, etc) and also for 2m, 432 etc the gain of the antenna. You throw that all in the blender and you can get an idea of the RF field intensity you are exposing yourself to. The FCC has mandated certain limits that are frequency dependent and you can easily go on line to look up and see what they are.

Finally, I am 100% positive if you get the make and model of your pace maker from your doc and contact the maker they will have exact numbers for you or any precautions they want you to follow or if they have any concerns at all. Sorry to be long-winded but there may be a very high probability that you are 100% in the clear and have nothing to fear. Feel free to contact me directly via e-mail if you need to chat about this further....I am ok in QRZ dot com. 73

 

[kenmbz]

The only issue I have with the PB is that my forks don't go far enough past the bar to work well. I will need to take the PB off to lift anything heavy with the bucket attach forks. I do love the PB , took out honysuckle and small trees, about 30 sq feet in no time. wouldve been hours with my brush cutter trimmer.

 

[W8BYA]

The only issue I have with the PB is that my forks don't go far enough past the bar to work well. I will need to take the PB off to lift anything heavy with the bucket attach forks. I do love the PB , took out honysuckle and small trees, about 30 sq feet in no time. wouldve been hours with my brush cutter trimmer.

Hey there Ken. I guess I do not understand your setup. I am trying to picture what you have there but it isn't working for me. Do you have a picture of the forks on the bucket that you can share? That way I think I could envision the PB added onto what you show me and it would be more clear to me.

And yes, I agree the PB is a real brush, small tree KILLER ! I love it.