Smells like fall & I'm ready for it
Behold my newest acquisition:
Just in time for the falling leaves, not to mention the compact car-sized brush pile I've been building!
The chipper/shredder/vac has been near the top of my "things to get" list for a few months now; with all the white and willow oaks, not to mention the star magnolia, dogwoods, pecans and crepe myrtles. Needless to say, we're going to have a lot of leaves hitting the ground pretty soon. The past few years here at 1250 had little, if any maintenance of the grounds, so we've been playing a lot of catch-up just getting the place back to square one.
So I've been researching for a while, reading up on the Troy Builts, BCS, Merry Macs and so on. Troy Built seemed to be the likely contender with a 3" chipper/shredder/vac, but their reviews are hit and miss, with some "they used to make great stuff" thrown in. Then I found an ad for this Cougar/Echo. This thing is a beast! At full speed it is a deafening roar waiting to devour branches in the blink of an eye. And it came with an extra chipper/flail plate, bonus!
The blades, stout, sharp and with a decent relief:
Alright, time to take out the old chipper/flail plate and put that new one in. Since I didn't have a pulley puller handy, I had to improvise. After some frustration trying to find the right place to apply enough leverage to crack the plate free of the shaft, I noticed that the extra chipper/flail plate had threads on the mounting hole; and it dawned on me that Cougar had built the puller into the plate. Great engineering forethought, now all I had to do was get the right bolt. Hey, I wonder if that 1/2-13 bolt holding on the front wheel would work? Bingo! Coincidence? Methinks not.
New on left, old on right
Just in time for the falling leaves, not to mention the compact car-sized brush pile I've been building!
The chipper/shredder/vac has been near the top of my "things to get" list for a few months now; with all the white and willow oaks, not to mention the star magnolia, dogwoods, pecans and crepe myrtles. Needless to say, we're going to have a lot of leaves hitting the ground pretty soon. The past few years here at 1250 had little, if any maintenance of the grounds, so we've been playing a lot of catch-up just getting the place back to square one.
So I've been researching for a while, reading up on the Troy Builts, BCS, Merry Macs and so on. Troy Built seemed to be the likely contender with a 3" chipper/shredder/vac, but their reviews are hit and miss, with some "they used to make great stuff" thrown in. Then I found an ad for this Cougar/Echo. This thing is a beast! At full speed it is a deafening roar waiting to devour branches in the blink of an eye. And it came with an extra chipper/flail plate, bonus!
The blades, stout, sharp and with a decent relief:
Alright, time to take out the old chipper/flail plate and put that new one in. Since I didn't have a pulley puller handy, I had to improvise. After some frustration trying to find the right place to apply enough leverage to crack the plate free of the shaft, I noticed that the extra chipper/flail plate had threads on the mounting hole; and it dawned on me that Cougar had built the puller into the plate. Great engineering forethought, now all I had to do was get the right bolt. Hey, I wonder if that 1/2-13 bolt holding on the front wheel would work? Bingo! Coincidence? Methinks not.
New on left, old on right
posted by twomartinis at 6:44 PM
1 Comments:
I found the manuals on Echo's website after seeing the exact same chipper/shredder/vac on Ebay, branded as Echo-only. My model is the CSV-5S, the CSV-8S 8HP model is identical except for the engine size.
If anyone else is using this, the manuals are here: http://www.echo-usa.com/technicalresults.asp?model=CSV-5S&type=8&english=1&B1=Submit
Also, two things I learned while getting used to this chipper/shredder/vac: The 5/8"x11 tpi bolt that is needed to break the rotor free from the driveshaft is the same bolt that holds the front wheels on, so you don't need to buy one. Two, if the machine gets hard to start, runs rough, then dies altogether - check the diaphragm on the Pulsa-Jet carburetor for microscopic holes. When these things develop holes they won't draw gas - replace with Briggs&Stratton part #272538 about $2
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