It went great actually. The machine ended up being a C130 instead of a C140, but it was still very worthwhile to spend the day watching it in action and to get about 15 minutes of operating time in it myself.
A ROW clearing company had just taken posession of the C130 yesterday and the Rayco salesman got their o.k. to let me come out today to watch it in action. They had one man operating the machine and a second man on foot with a little Stihl chainsaw taking care of the stuff that the C130 couldn't get to.
I was very impressed with the C130, including everything from it's mulching ability, the visibility rearward from the cab, the air conditioning & cabin filtration, to it's steel tracks. I really like the fact that it comes with a hydraulic fluid cooling stack mounted behind the cab with a reversible hydraulically driven fan, it's not an engineering afterthought, but designed into the machine from the beginning. The engine compartment appeared relatively spacious compared to an ASV RC-100. There are no exposed hydraulic hoses going to the drive motors to get ripped off as there are on the RC-100. The cabin filtration system is also not an afterthought like on the RC-100. (I'm not trying to rip on the RC-100, it's just that I am most familiar with it and am using it to make comparisons.)
It was very quickly obvious to me that a rubber tracked machine would not last long in the same conditions after seeing all the 'spikes' sticking up after making one pass with the mulching head. This was a ROW clearing job where doing the absolute best job of mulching everything down to ground level is not required, so most of the work was done with one pass as if you were mowing your yard.
My overall impression is that the C130 is designed & built from the start to be a brush mulcher. You don't have to add things like an external hydraulic oil cooler, a cabin filtration system, body panel protection, undercarriage protection, hydraulic hose & coupler protection, a special cabin door and so on.
