Well, it arrived fine. FedEx apparently banged the boxes around a good bit and the box the blade was in had a couple small holes and the foam filler was partly in pieces, paint got a little chipped on a few things, but no worries; it is nothing any worse than I have intentions on doing to it during normal operations. Here was how it arrived:
After assembly (which was a breeze), I thought I'd give it a whirl before putting it in the barn. One of the places we drive by the barn has quite a bit of compaction and water stands when it rains, so I thought I'd test it on that. Knowing that it will probably be the hardest part of my land I figured it would be a good test.
Made one slow 60' pass just beside where the tires of our vehicles compact, awesome.
Started to make another pass a few feet from it and made it about 30' and bang went the sheer bolt. Knew I needed the sheer due to the rocky soil here, thank goodness for it or the whole thing would have been a pretzel. I was in low range at 1500RPM and hardly moving, so pretzel may be an exaggeration, but needless to say I'm tickled to have spent the extra on one with a sheer bolt design. Here is how far I made it on the second pass:
I fully expected if it was going to sheer, this part of the land would be the place it would sheer, so no big deal. The only concern I have is when the sheer bolt sheered, half popped off, the other half bent and acted as a wedge that bent the bracket slightly.
Upon inspection, I can see there are masses of fill weld between the plates that make up the bracket, and none at the tip of the square rod spacing the two plates apart. I'm thinking if I straighten the bend and put a little more weld at the tip of the square rode spacing the two plates, it may provide a bit of extra support (since the bend occurred at this exact spot).
Overall I am pleased with the weight and design. I am very pleased I got the sheer style instead of a rigid unit. I would purchase again even with the minor day one setback.
). When talking to ETA they said the subsoiler was small enough they could ship it to the farm fine, but since I already had things setup for the dealer to receive it, I stuck with that plan.
