Re: EarthForce EF-5 usage report
I just got back from a 5-day project with the EF-500. I found that my productivity with the machine was much lower than I'd hoped. I couldn't get much done because of all the questions people were asking! /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif
No one there had ever seen one before, of course. Two contractors working on the project, one of whom owns a hardscaping business, the other being a general contractor, decided on the spot to buy an EarthForce machine. The hardscaper said he expects he'll end up replacing all 4 of his skid steers with them, if they work as well for him as mine did for me on the project.
I ended up doing pretty much everything the machine is capable of on this project. The first day on the job, an 18-wheeler got stuck trying to back a loaded trailer onto the site, so I hooked a chain to the rear of the trailer to pull him backwards up the hill, while he pushed. I frankly didn't think I'd be able to do much for him, but to my amazement (and even more so everyone else's), it pulled him about 2/3 of the way up the hill before the EF-500 got stuck, too. I noticed that I was digging deep trenches with the rear tires, but the front tires were hardly digging at all. So, we unhooked and I went over to a pile of wet red clay and picked up almost a yard of the stuff, moved back over to the trailer and hooked up again. At this point, one of the guys on the job, who's got a lot of experinece with heavy equipment, said "This never would've happened if the truck driver had been helping." I said "You mean he wasn't pushing?" and he said "Nope." So, he went over and told the driver he was going to have to help, and that, combined with the extra weight in the front bucket, got it the rest of the way up the hill. I've previously said the area I expected the EF-500 to be least satisfactory in was pulling power. I sort of expected that it might not even measure up to the capabilies of my previous L4310HST in this regard, because of a combination of much larger tires in the rear, and the gear reduction in the differential. I no longer have any such misgivings. The EF-500 will pull just fine, thank you. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif Half a dozen guys on site said they were amused when I hooked up to that trailer - they never expected it would pull it.
I dug up some pampas grass clumps with the backhoe that were individually all a 150-class pickup could handle. I pulled some very large (8-foot diameter) boxwoods up with the FEL and 4-in-1 bucket. It was one of those that made a believer of the hardscaper. He told me later that when I grabbed hold of one of those larger boxwoods, he expected to see the rear of the EF-500 to come off the ground, or the bucket just sit there, but the last thing he thought would happen would be for the boxwood to come out of the ground. But come out it did - at just off idle engine speed, too. It was a little after that that he came over and said "What in the world is that thing, anyway?"
I stripped the topsoil and ground cover off of a thousand or so square feet of area and moved dozens of yards of topsoil and mulch, using both the 2/3 yard 4-in-1 and the 1 3/4 yard high-capacity bucket.
I used the Switch Hitch to move a bunch of trailers around on site.
I placed half a dozen landscape rocks ranging up to a ton in weight. One of them, a 400-500 pound one, I placed using the backhoe and thumb at full extension, because the place we wanted to put it wasn't accessible using the FEL.
I used the FEL-mounted forks to set 3 HVAC units.
I used the auger to drill half a dozen tree holes in hard red clay, and a bunch more shrub holes. One of the main reasons I started looking for a replacement for the
L4310 was the difficulty in taking the 3-point auger on and off. In just one day, I counted 7 changes between the auger head and the backhoe bucket. Using the backhoe quick-attach, it's a 2-minute process requiring almost no physical effort.
The same day, I counted more than a dozen changes between FEL implements: 4-in-1 bucket, high-capacity bucket, Switch Hitch and forks.
Maneuverability was much better than with the
L4310. I was easily able to get around in places the
L4310 wouldn't have been able to.
At the end of the project, I wasn't nearly as tired and beat up physically as I usually am. I think it's because of a combination of not having to struggle with the auger changes, and not having to look over my shoulder all day. It was amazing how much less fatiguing it was to always be working in front of you instead of behind you.
I was also amazed at how quickly the operation of the 4-in-1 bucket is becoming instinctive, using the two inter-connected FEL levers - I think I'm really going to like that control set-up.
All in all, a very successful full trial of the new machine. It did everything I asked it to do every single time and never really even balked, except for having to get a load of dirt in the FEL bucket to get maximum traction with the front tires - but I should've done that to start with.
The custom flashing LED warning lights just about stopped traffic in its tracks. They were incredibly effective - more so than I'd even hoped. I spent a lot of time on an adjacent road with a 45-mph speed limit and a blind curve about 50 yards from where I was entering and exiting the highway - an excellent test.
I only had one problem the whole time. At one point, I couldn't get the engine to return to idle. I thought it was probably a linkage problem, but after looking around a bit, I discovered that a piece of gravel had gotten wedged in front of the accelerator pedal and was preventing it from coming all the way back up. Extracting it with a pair of pliers solved the problem.
An annoyance I noted was that, at certain engine speeds, a resonance develops in the floor plates and creates an uncomfortably high noise level. I'm going to look into some noise control materials to try to control that a bit.
Fuel consumption for the entire job was .97 gph. That's a little higher than I expected. It turns out I have a fuel leak in the hose running from the fuel tank to the injector pump. It doesn't appear to be a very big leak, though, so I'm not really sure how much it will affect actual fuel usage. I'll find out on the next big project, coming up the third week in April.
