I got mine today! It's exactly what I need. Unfortunately it is too hot in the barn/shop to charge the battery. It charged for a few minutes then the battery just flashed red. I brought it in the house and have it on the charger. I did run it for a minute on two bars. It seems to be fast and very handy weight/balance wise. I tried to vary the throttle and it doesn't, it is on or off. Maybe some cost savings going on?
I have a mess like that in the back of my property. I tell myself the same thing but it is hard to find that kind of time.
I was looking and an 8 hour rental is around $700 if I pick the machine up myself. I could accomplish in 20 minutes what it would take me days with the brush cutter. I’m looking at the fall when the weather is cooler and the ground wasps are dead. I probably only need a half day rental.
Yup and lost productivity and money down the drain if they light me up. Been there done that, Benadryl on the couch for the rest of the day.
Mulching blade is in. Looks legit. There were some knockoffs for sale on Amazon but some of the reviews noted that the blades would break the tips off at high RPM after some use. Lol no thanks. The blade is designed to be used not in a side to side motion but in an up to down motion. Will report back once I get some run time on it.
FS110. I ran it for about 10 minutes earlier on some bamboo, Russian olive branches and other stemmy weeds. I think it’s too heavy for the unit and I don’t mean nose heavy. Too heavy for the clutch and drum. It takes 4 or 5 second to get to max speed and it works great but the head spins a long time after no throttle. It might really jack something up in the drive of the unit. So my interest got the best of me and I had to get out the scale and check. Three blade knife . 72lb or 11.25 oz This has been sharpened many times. It would be a bit heavier out of the box. Saw blade .80 lb or 12.8oz Almost brand new. String head full of string .76lb or 12.16 oz and last but not least the Oregon mulching blade. 1.24 lb or 19.84 oz The mulching blade is 1.55 x heavier than the saw blade. Probably not going to work long term. This is the 4mm thick version they also make a 3mm version. Edit: the 3mm version weights 15.2 oz or .95 lb which would take much less power to run. It really never occurred to me to check that it may be too heavy.
They rent them without operators? Have run a SVL95-2 with a Fecon head a bit. Liability and equipment damage possibilities are very high. Seems to be a fair bit of technique involved to efficiently use one ( I was starting to get the gist of it). Starting out I was raising the boom quite a bit. It's fun, but the closer that head stays to the ground, the faster it will work. Don't grind down a small tree via the boom. Chop it at the base and get it on the ground, then grind it. Learned this from a youtube channel and it seems to hold true. Don't get me wrong, making a stem disappear is fun, it's just less efficient. Efficiency is the name of the game with grinders. Everything about using them is expensive. The unit I have used is privately owned. Owner purchased new cutter teeth last year to the tune of near as much makes no difference 4 thousand dollars (hundred bucks per tooth). If you do rent one, make sure the skid steer has adequate power/flow to properly run the mulcher. The 95-2 is a fairly high powered unit and you still need to stop and wait for head speed sometimes. Honestly unless you have a LOT of stems to grind, I would opt for one of the super heavy brushogs instead. Pretty sure they'll eat anything up to 7-8". Left material will be more coarse, but I doubt that is any issue.
Another "value add" for the FSA 80 R over the FSA 57 and FSA 60 is the Stihl AutoCut 26-2 head. Same head that's used on all of the professional trimmers, but the trimmer is on the AK battery platform. The 25-2, (now 26-2) is a well-proven design, that you can actually get parts for, but most homeowners never need anything. Maybe a spool or two over the life of the trimmer. But all parts are replaceable should you lose something. (happens!) Before Echo introduced the Speed Feed heads, I used to swap the threaded adapters and spin AutoCut 25-2's onto an Echo, tossing the old "Trimmy-Hit" heads into the garbage where they belong IMO. Old Echo trimmer & Stihl head made for some real trimming bliss if there ever was such a thing. The FSA 60 R uses the 6-2 head, which is a modern descendant of the AutoCut 5-2, which has also been around on smaller trimmers for decades. Just not as bullet-proof as the 25-2 was. With the FSA 57 using an even smaller (and different) head than either of the two previous Stihl standards, I'm not sure you'd get a Speed Feed 400 mounted on it and if you did, I'd be concerned about all the extra rotating mass sucking the power out of the tool.
I'm very happy with the stock Stihl head on it. I don't need HD because I have the 7 HP DR Mega whacker.
I'm not sure I want to get after 7-8" stems with a rotary cutter. 4" maybe, bigger than that and the chainsaw (or a mulcher) looks like a pretty good option. Deere still sells their super-duty cutters, they were built like tanks (pictures never did them justice) and the gearboxes would grind M1A1's without much trouble.
I borrowed one of these off a neighbor and liked it so much i bought one He'd given 426.00 at home depot Rural king has them for 280.00 I cut ditch line's with it No complaints it cut them 4-5ft weeds easily. Need to find better .170 line.
