Boy, I sure hate to sound like the odd man out here but we have a tandem axel Olathe 864 drum chipper with the stock Cummins 177hp diesel turbo charged engine that works remarkably well.
I can't say one way or another about any other Olathe chippers but I'd buy one or two more 864s if I could find them. We use ours all day long and feed it whole railroad ties, pallets and our mill scraps which are all hardwoods.
Cedar, which is hard to run on many chippers, runs fine on an 864. The knives are still perfect and sharp on mine allowing us to really load it up and it never stalls due to two hydraulic feeders that are load sentisive.
It sure doesn't make nice looking mulch, however. Some of the pieces are as large as a small banana. This is probably the only fault I can site. This machine can grind hardwood tree limbs up to 12" faster than several workers can load them in.
Mine is noisy, it weighs 10,000 lbs. and it's butt ugly but it has run forever and we've never had to replace a single part! Never been down a single hour yet - knock on wood. Where else can you get a dependable work horse like this for around $5,000? We've worn out numerous chippers but this ugly thing seems like it will last another 20 years!
Here again, I am only speaking of the 864 model. The other models may very well be total junk, I don't know. As far as parts, there really aren't many parts that could wear or fail but Toro still offers them. It's a really simple design which I prefer anyway.
If you run into any 864s you aren't interested in please drop me a line. Most people wouldn't want anything this big anyway. It takes a 2.5 ton truck to pull it. Glad to pay a finder's fee.
Good luck!
Dennis
