Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I have owned a 1998 version of this shredder for 8 years, and finally gave it away.I plan to upgrade to a 8HP Bearcat or similar (more robust) shredder.
I have 1/2 acre with Douglas Fir trees which tend to drop branches in windstorms, like the one that hit Dec. 14.I have also had ivy and blackberry bushes to clear, so I knew that one blue yardwaste bin 2x a month would never cut it.I bought my shredder at the local Home Depot, mostly because I did not know what else was out there, and it seemed like a good product (at the time).
I found out over the years that it is really just a very light duty machine, and that actually using it will wear it out pretty easily.I only used mine 2-4 times per year, whenever I had a pile built up, but anything which could wear out did.
The axle for the two wheels runs through the base plate, which is just bent sheet metal with no bushings for the axle.As a result, vibrations elongated one of the axle holes such that it dropped right out of the plate.
The small feed chute is for branches up to 2" diameter.It works fine as long as you are pushing the branch down.Once the branch gets down to about 18" long, the blades just won't grab the stick and bite it, and itstead it sort of bounces up the chute.Eventually, it may get consumed in micro-bites, but you are probably better just pulling the remnant out and putting it in the firewood pile.
The big feed chute for leaves and small branches is a blow-molded piece of plastic.They wisely made both chutes just longer than a man's arm's length, to prevent idiots from sticking their fingers into the blade area.But the molded-in stresses on the big chute resulted in stress cracks at all four corners.I had one chute replaced for these cracks while it was still under warrantee, and the new chute quickly developed the same sort of cracks.
The discharge chute is stamped and spot-welded sheet metal, and it too developed stress cracks from the vibrations, and the welds eventually gave way.There are hand-knobs for unscrewing the bolts which hold that discharge chute in place, and I became well acquainted with them.The screen that stops the big chunks for rechopping is a set of four bars, through which the flails reach like 3 fingers in order to grab anything that was too big to fly through.Unfortunately, the metal used in the screen was so soft and ductile that it quickly went from convex to concave, so that debris piled up just out of the reach of the flails.That means I had to shut down, open the discharge chute (which does not stay open on its own, but instead falls down on your hands), then find a big bolt or pin to hammer out the two pins which hold in the screen.Once I pulled the accumulate debris away and got that screen out, I would flip it around 180 degrees so that the newly convex side faced the flails, and reassemble.I have gone through 3 screens in 8 years because metal does not like to be bent back and forth like that very many times (think about bending a wire coat hanger), and it eventually breaks.They need a beefier screen to stand up to the force of wood chips hitting it.
The shredder blades are not easily sharpened, and my attempts resulted in a horribly imbalanced machine.One must also entirely remove the big shredder chute to access those blades, involving taking nuts off of 6 lugs, which don't line back up again very well with the housing when I tried to reassemble.That housing also developed stress cracks in the plastic at the point where it joins the metal shredder wheel housing.
Vibrations also caused the gas tank mounting slots to break off, such that the plastic gas tank was barely held in place by the time I gave mine away.The engine still ran nicely, although I did have to replace the carburetor after the old one got clogged with some gunk and the rebuild kit failed to work.One other interesting vibrational behavior was that the machine liked to "walk", such that I had to dig a hole in the dirt for it to sit in just so that it would not wander away from where I was using it.
The unit came with a mesh bag for catching the chips, but it was so small that I never used it.The chips come flying out so fast that they will travel 30-40 feet unless you have some sort of back stop.
On the whole, this shredder does do what the advertising says it does, but it just does not do very much of it without a lot of attention, TLC, and swearing.Luckily, it makes so much noise that the swearing is not heard by others if done while it is running.If you just want to shred maple leaves once or twice a year, this may be okay, provided that you have some degree of mechanical aptitude.But for me, I am happy to leave that flimsy contraption behind as a regrettable chapter in my life.
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Product Description:
The Yard Machines 5.5-horsepower chipper shredder comes equipped with a 5.5-horsepower Briggs and Stratton engine, and features a 2-inch chipper capacity with a 10:1 reduction ratio. The unit also comes with a 3-way poly drop-down and rake-in hopper with a steel blade for added strength and durability. The chipper comes with a 2.5-bushel bag capacity for added convenience and is backed by a 2-year warranty.
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