Track Barrow (EuroPorter 550)
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- Опубліковано 18 вер 2024
- This machine is a rebadged FratelliCamisaTP285, made in Italy www.fratellica... by an agri-machinery manufacturer who have been in business since the 50's and make all sorts of niche machines up to really heavy duty stuff. Frame and gearbox = made 100% in Italy (in Italian law if it says "Made in Italy" then it has to be actually made in Italy) Well, the frame is stamped made in Italy, but the tracks are by ITR, a company owned by USCO www.usco.it/en... who apparently are the big cheese in tracks and undercarriage components in Europe. The crowd I bought it from - AgriEuro - states that the tracks are made in Japan, well who knows? Wherever they are made, I'm sure they are good quality and I will be able to get identical replacements years from now. The motor is a Honda GX200, made in Thailand. This motor is excellent, ubiquitous and dead reliable, and it, and it's clones, will be around for many, many years. On close inspection the frame looks extremely rugged, big clean welds, mostly 4mm box and channel, some 10mm, even the non structural parts like the track guards at the back are 3mm. Its a heavy little machine, 200kg. Track tensioning is via heavy springs compressed with a bolt. I'm very impressed with the build quality all round. The only sour point is the gear changes are sticky and you have to giv it a teeny bit of clutch to get them to shift, but they have freed up somewhat during the first couple of hours of use - will update again after a while.
Very handsame machine
Steel thickness is irrelevant unless you are a designer. Joint and frame design is more relevant but still above the paygrade of a user who keeps the load within specified requirements. Similar track barrows available in the US, using domestic frames, Asian engines and third party gearboxes - which I suspect are the highest-cost component. The two largest domestic small-engine manufacturers, Briggs & Stratton and Kohler, buy lot quantities of certain Asian engines and rebrand them as theirs. Frame fabricators also buy lot quantities and rebrand if their sales volume is high enough. Frame fabricators are prolific, typically originating from small-volume agricultural equipment fabricators, trailer fabricators and weld shops who can gain market access. There is an overabundance of new track barrows available in the US right now, mostly fabricated and assembled with pre-pandemic materials, with downward pressure on retail prices. When production starts up again, prices will skyrocket.
Nice video. We use something similar - again with no instructions to speak of. Was your gearbox not sealed at the factory? We are finding our gears harder to select and were wondering about an oil change but unsure if the box is supposed to be sealed and left alone.
Mine was not sealed and the instructions say to check there is oil in the gearbox. There's no way to check the level, so I drained and refilled.
Great video. We are looking at buying one of these. We live in Portugal on the side of a mountain and we have to haul out a lot of wood, which is on the steep slopes. How well does it cope with such terrain. Regards. Paul
Hi Paul, it depends. It will be fine up to 30 degree slopes, but no more than that, I would say. Only straight up and down, no sideways lean. The higher you stack, the higher the centre of gravity and the dodgier it becomes. One thing I have thought of - but not tried - is building "outriggers" with wheelbarrow wheels on the ends, port and starboard, to give a safety factor and prevent sideways rollover on slopes.
My comments on this thing after 1 month.
Firstly, excellent quality overall, worth the money assuming it continues as it has started. Second, if you only speak English and you want a full manual then you are probably out of luck. French or Italian fine. Third, the gears and steering are clunky, no way around that but it is annoying. Fourth, if you are transporting using the extendable sides I would consider getting yourself some adhesive matting for the base of the bed at least until the paint scuffs since logs slide off all too easily. Fifth, the extendable sides are fixed from below by some hand tightened screws and have a tendency to come loose: I lost one in the forest already so I would recommend you tighten them using a tool or have spares. Sixth, as the manual says, wear hearing protectors, I didn't once and it does eventually hurt.
I concur with all of this. Nuts either too loose or too tight. One of my tightning nuts seized up up and I broke it. I cut a piece of light galvanized sheet to fit the bed and glued it down with tek7 to save the bed from getting scratched and rusty. Paint seems very hard Waring though. Also tied a wee pouch to the crossbar between the handles to hold a ratchet straps, which is essential for logs. Been moving tonnes of bog and clay soil up a bank to higher ground, and it's been excellent. The industrial dumpers would be too heavy for this job and their center of gravity too high, not to mention too expensive to hire for the kind of work, which five or so loads, as-and-when.
Thanks for your job! the idle speed and good road, what is it? And the consumption / hour?
Hi. By idle speed I take it you mean KPH? About 3, top speed, no load. Loaded, maybe 1.5 - 2 kph. Depends on gradient etc. Petrol consumption per hour, probably 0.5lt, if doing stop-start work. Non stop moving, probably 1lt per hour. It's very efficient.
@@RememberTheSlapFilms okay. thanks for the reply from him.
I am looking for a model that can reach 6 km / h when empty. My firewood extraction area is about 3 km or more.
@@oscar3088 Get a quad bike and trailer!
@@RememberTheSlapFilms I contemplated that option, but it prevents me from going into the woods and the roads to my house are very muddy and steep for a trailer. Besides, the price is higher. Grillo has a model with tracks that reaches 8 km / h, but very very expensive .... thank you for your advice and time.
Well I bought one and considering the problem with the Corona Virus it was delivered relatively quickly. As you state all instructions are in Italian which is a problem. What I need to know is how do you check the gearbox oil level. I have found the filler cap but can’t establish oil level. Thanks in anticipation. Paul
Hi Paul. There is no way to check the level! You drain it, fill it with 800ml and run it till the next change and hope it's not leaking. When I changed mine the first time, I noticed it only contained 500ml instead of the required 800ml. This pissed me off quite a bit. Starting from scratch, I would drain the oil into a clean vessel and measure it. Then put it back in, and top up to 800 if it needs it. Run for ten hours or so, then change it. The gears will produce lots of metal dust as they bed in, and this needs to be cleared. The oil is 80W90. The drain plug is plastic and removed with an allen key. There is a gasket washer - don't lose it! Easy to over tighten the drain plug on reinsertion and strip the Allen key depression so go easy. The filler plug is a weird vented affair that is slightly "squishy". It's position means it's nearly impossible to loosen by hand, but if you clamp down on it with a vise grips, you'll damage it. The best tool I found for this job is the Knipex Cobra 25 mini water pump pliers. It's small enough to fit in the space radially, and the jaw serrations "bite" the plastic enough to get good purchase without squeezing the shit out of it. Worth buying, they're an excellent tool to have in the car kit anyway.
I fill the gearbox with a big 100mm dosing syringe from the chemist or Agri supply place. Pour the gear oil into a clean jar, then suck and squirt.
Once you have it filled with the right amount, you coukd make a wire dipstick, and figure out some repeatable way of marking the correct oil level for future reference. But I haven't bothered with this. Gear boxes don't really "use up" oil, unless they are leaking.
To be honest, the whole process of changing the gearbox oil is a serious pain. Having two rows of blocks to raise the machine up is a help.
The engine oil change is also a pain. When you remove the plug nut, it gushes out all over the machine. I make a kind of "funell" from plastic packaging, that starts off flat under the drain hole, and kind of has upturned lips on the sides. It's fiddly, doesn't work very well, but is less messy than just letting it gush out uncontrolled. I'll try and make a little vid tomorrow, as I have been doing maintenance on my dumper these last few days.
Remember The Slap Films thank you very much for the advice. Really helpful. It’s a great machine but let down by silly but easy to over come issues. Thanks again
How have you been getting on with the machine? Positives, negatives? Just had one delivered, a manual in Italian and one in French(which I can more-or-less follow), no English as yet. I'm one of those people that read manuals. Shifted a few barrows of clay around the garden, found it very manoeuvrable and dead easy to use. Like yourself found that the gears sometimes needed some clutch to shift. Thanks for the video.
It's been excellent, you should remember to change the gearbox oil after it's run in, maybe ten hours or so. When I drained mine, after about 30 odd hours, I think, only 500ml came out, not 800, as is called for in the manual. So I can only assume they underfilled it at the factory. There was a lot of metal dust in it, I hope it was just the gears bedding in....filled up with 800ml of 80w90 or whatever it is, and ran it for a few more hours, then drained again. 800ml came out, with just a little metal dust. Hopefully I'm good now...the gears definitely shifted easier after the second fill, but still need clutch every other gear change or so. I've been pulling fair sizes trees with it, shifting firewood, pulled a big stone with a chain...make sure to check the track tension as well. It seems to go a bit slack over time. My tracks are starting to develop cracks in places, not worried, but I think they might have not been the newest when the were installed. They are cheap to buy though, about €130 each or something...be careful backing up, especially around trees...
Neil Carey
Sorry about that last reply, not sure what happened. Anyway thanks for the advice re. oil. Used it again today shifting rubble and clay, first time in my life that I found such a task pleasurable. As regards reversing, I watched your warning video afterwards, nasty enough. I've had a two-wheel tractor for years so I know the dangers. Thanks again.
@@neilcarey2535 Great feeling isn't it? I've been able to harvest free firewood that I would have turned my nose up at before, because of distance to road and terrain. I do find it very tippy on hard bumpy ground though, and wonder how long the wheel bearings will hold up when it crests a hillock and clunks down...
Hi Thanks for the video, very helpful. Looking at one of these for my woodland which has some big slopes. Is this the hydro version? I guess my question is really can you manually tip the non-hydro version Also, I would probably use it more as a barrow: did you see the barrow version they had on the website and why did you choose the one here with extendable sides?