DR Power Stump Grinders

[Old Red]

Oh no worries...I Like it and I asked about how you all handle the borrowing of "friends".

So I have been fooling around with a stupid hour meter for this thing. I was being hard headed and did not want to use an hour meter that when the battery ran down you were SOL unless you have a very good memory. So I bought a mechanical one that runs off DC voltage. The starting and charging system on this thing is a little unique. The key has 2 positions. Start and Off. Start engages the start motor and off disengages the start motor. The "run" is the operator presence handle. Long story short, the only wires that are hot when operating and not hot when not operating are the 2 A/C yellow wires coming from the stator going to the regulator/rectifier. I am have tapped into one of those and purchased an A/C hour meter. All this sounds simple but it took me a couple days of reading to figure this crap out. I hate it when I start chasing rabbits....but that is what I did here...chased rabbits...and a little hard headed.

Oh, and the only A/C hour meter I could find takes a battery...but it will grab power form the source when the battery fails....hopefully.

 

[k0ua]

Oh no worries...I Like it and I asked about how you all handle the borrowing of "friends".

So I have been fooling around with a stupid hour meter for this thing. I was being hard headed and did not want to use an hour meter that when the battery ran down you were SOL unless you have a very good memory. So I bought a mechanical one that runs off DC voltage. The starting and charging system on this thing is a little unique. The key has 2 positions. Start and Off. Start engages the start motor and off disengages the start motor. The "run" is the operator presence handle. Long story short, the only wires that are hot when operating and not hot when not operating are the 2 A/C yellow wires coming from the stator going to the regulator/rectifier. I am have tapped into one of those and purchased an A/C hour meter. All this sounds simple but it took me a couple days of reading to figure this crap out. I hate it when I start chasing rabbits....but that is what I did here...chased rabbits...and a little hard headed.

Oh, and the only A/C hour meter I could find takes a battery...but it will grab power form the source when the battery fails....hopefully.

You could rectify the AC with a simple diode turned the proper direction in series with one leg of the AC and maybe a smoothing capacitor from + to ground then put on a DC hour meter. This is about a couple dollars worth of components. So make your own DC.

 

[Old Red]

An update to this thread with a couple videos of how well the stump grinder works. Total time was 15 minutes for this stump. This is only my second stump so I need to get more efficient with it, but even at that, it was quick and easy. This thing crushes the stumps and does not wear me out. It mostly will eat on its own except manuervering it around a little. They just came out with one this week (wouldn't you know) that is self propelled. That would be a nice thing to have. I have the tow bar, but being self propelled was something a lot of reviewers said would be nice and I agree. Not sure I would pony up the extra 500 bones for it tho.

 

[Old Red]

This is part 2.

 

[Jim Timber]

I hired a guy to do some tree work for me. The ash tree was cut down and cleaned up leaving a 24" stump. He came back the next day while I was away, with a rented DR stump grinder. When I got home, he was sitting in the shade with some ice water and a wet towel. He had been grinding on that stump for over an hour. Judging by his progress, it would be another hour before the stump would be completed and it would only be about 2" deep.

I told him to stop working before he hurt himself and that I would call a guy I knew with a 50 hp Vermeer stump grinder. He ground a 12" deep hole and left a giant pile of wood chips the size of my thumb, all in about 10 minutes.

I,ll never operate one with handlebars after watching that.

I'm also much in favor of the two-finger pilot method. Mine's 59HP though.

I only burn about a gallon an hour running the grinder. Cost of operating is next to nothing so far. I'm still on the first indexing of my teeth too.

 

[Daniel23]

If you buy a Dr Stump Grinder you can also rent it out.
I live in a rural community and there are lots of folks who put a sign on their lawn saying 'stump grinder for rent' or 'log splitter for rent,' etc., along with the rates.
I imagine that by doing this you could quickly pay off the purchase price, especially if you're that far away from your nearest rental spot. The downside is of course that you don't know how people are going to treat it.

 

[JamesHW]

Been mulling buying the Caravaggi stump grinder implement for my BCS walk behind. Looks pretty good in the pictures and video on the linked page, won’t take up a lot of space in our shed. The DR looks ok but not a fan of fan belts and maintaining another engine that will sit around a lot.

 

[bigtiller]

Been mulling buying the Caravaggi stump grinder implement for my BCS walk behind. Looks pretty good in the pictures and video on the linked page, won’t take up a lot of space in our shed. The DR looks ok but not a fan of fan belts and maintaining another engine that will sit around a lot.

Watch the operator in the video. These little machines are very labor intensive. And after 5 minutes of grinding, the stump is still there. It is low enough that the lawnmower will travel over it.

For the $1600 price tag of the attachment, I would go a different route....but I'm on the good side of 70 and not as sturdy as I used to be.