I bent my splitter's toe plate!!

Why not take your saw to the remaining oak and cut it down to chunks you can haul home? At least you won't lose the wood to someone else. Split them to size later.

yup thats what i would do. if i have "claim" to some wood i try like hell not to let it sit. i was a little slow with some oak and i screwed myself outta a few truckloads

I saw my big stuff up on site into manageable pieces as normal practice. Just did a 30"+ maple last Saturday. Each 16" length of but log was sawed into 6 pieces. Just the trunk filled my dump trailer. Will be real easy to split when I get around to it.

Mark, Sorry to hear about your problems and I hope it's repaired quickly and free of charge.
I've never seen any report of this happening on an MTD splitter though.
Something about living in glass houses comes to mind.

Good Luck,
Bob

didn't want to post until I received my new frame/foot.

when I saw Blueridgemark's bent foot... got worried and checked mine out.... sure enough it was bent... not very much... but it was bent.

put a straight edge and took pic's for speeco. They immediately shipped a new body/foot to me via truck at no charge. Yes new foot is substantially beefier!

they are also going to pay two hours to switch out... it's such an easy job switching parts... 2 hours is very_generous.

all you do is un-bolt hydraulic cylinder/wedge. set to side without disconnecting hoses. then stand up old body/foot. unpin... move aside old body.... then stand up new body into position... pin... lay back down, then bolt cylinder/wedge.... done..

speeco has a 3 year warranty on steel parts.... everyone that's got a 35ton speeco needs to check out their foot with a 90 degree straight edge.

Speeco's customer service has been the best I've dealt with!
no one predicts stuff like this happening... what counts is how the mfg handles it.... I'd do business with Speeco again without hesitation!

Grammer???

Haywire Haywood said:

Tom, you're always so helpful.. thanks for being a contributing member here! :notrolls2:

How about building the face up with a wedge shaped piece of metal welded to the front of the existing toe make a flat surface again. You could build spikes into it to stop a repeat performance.

Ian

Click to expand...

That is alright grammer here in S.E. Tucky....around Laurel county>If you can say "i dont care to do that " ,around here it means ,you wouldnt mind doing that.......takes awhile to git used to it.........different part of K.Y . me thinks though

cracked toe plates

I went to Home Depot to check out their log splitters and in the rental dept.
they had 3 Huskee splitters 2 of them the welds at the plate were cracked
and the toe was bent over I'm going to see if they will sell one cheap.

welcome to AS... your first post..
can you post pictures?

The Groove said:

I went to Home Depot to check out their log splitters and in the rental dept.
they had 3 Huskee splitters 2 of them the welds at the plate were cracked
and the toe was bent over I'm going to see if they will sell one cheap.

Click to expand...

The Groove said:

I went to Home Depot to check out their log splitters and in the rental dept.
they had 3 Huskee splitters 2 of them the welds at the plate were cracked
and the toe was bent over I'm going to see if they will sell one cheap.

Click to expand...

Good thinking.

The Groove said:

I went to Home Depot to check out their log splitters and in the rental dept.
they had 3 Huskee splitters 2 of them the welds at the plate were cracked
and the toe was bent over I'm going to see if they will sell one cheap.

Click to expand...

Where you planning on buying one cheap then Calling SpeeCo for a warranty claim or rebuilding yourself?

bent

I went there to buy a used splitter. Then I saw they were bent I thought I could buy one cheaper and fix it myself. I didn't ask about them because I had to go to work. I guess you could try to warrenty it though. I'm going back to find out about buying one. I'll take pics of the bent ones. They did have a vermeer 6 inch 25 hp wood chipper for sale so I told my brother about and he bought it for $3200. new it was $11,000

When I was at HD last week I saw they had 12 ton Earthquake splitters and I think some rinky dink 8 ton? Yard Machine ones. Looked cheap as all heck. Whats the deal on the earthquakes?





Kevin

Toe Plate

Blue Ridge Mark,

Has your toe plate been replaced yet? I wanted to make sure you got taken care of. Heard about your issue and I wanted to extend our help if it hasn't already been replaced. We like to think our steel has no match, but when a situation like this comes up we do honor our structural warranty.

Thanks for putting the splitter through the field test with that oak! We split what we can here in Colorado, but it's great to have this kind of forum for real-time use.

Let me know if there is anything we can do for you.

Carolyn@Speeco
800.525.8322 ex.146

Way to go, Glad to see a company back it's product. I have a 35 ton older model that has been flawlees. It's nice to know if ever it does give me a problem speeco will listen. I know mark will appreciate the effort to make his splitter right.

Let me know if there is anything we can do for you.

Carolyn@Speeco
800.525.8322 ex.146

Click to expand...

Carolyn, Glad to see Speeco responding on this forum. I've mentioned somewhere in this forum your 22ton unit has a small issue. The wedge gate( as I call it ) could stand to be a bit more robust. Me and my neighbor both have one and we have both managed to bend the so call (built in log holder..nice marketing on that one ). If a piece doesn't split and gets really stuck tight in the retraction back through the gate there can be enough force up high to bend and distort those angles welded onto the beam ( you know...built in log holder). Those angles in my opinion should be chucked for a more conventional method of guiding the ram on the beam and install real log holders. Of coarse the gate would need redesigned then too. Bill

Built in log cradle/gate

Bill,

Thanks for the comments & R&D ideas! Can't wait to see the pictures.
I had never really looked at the practical use of the 3pt ground stand before since we see the vertical operation more often than not. Definitely something to reconsider for 2009.

Have a good one!

Carolyn@SpeeCo

UPDATE! Finally fixed.

Hi, folks. Been too busy with a new job to hang around here, but I wanted to give an update on this thread.

Well, I split some wood today. Just a short run to make sure everything was working right. Tackled some more of that ancient oak that caused bent the toe plate. Everything is dandy! I'm a happy camper! :biggrinbounce2:


Now, about that customer service....


Other than the one message I left that didn't get returned, Speeco has been terrific. (Hey, it happens. ONCE doesn't mean anything except that you are dealing wiht humans.) TSC has been terriffic. The warranty repair center has been.... less than terrific.

How? Check the calendar. I bent the plate on 08-23-2008, a Saturday. I had the splitter in to the warranty repair center (a local shop, not part of TSC) on the 25th, a Monday. (Right at closing time.)

I finally got a call from the warranty center last Friday (26 Sept) that it was ready to pick up. They aren't open on Saturday, so I had my wife pick it up this week.

That's ONE MONTH to get this thing fixed.

In between were multiple calls to the warranty center. They never returned calls, but they did promise to several times. When I didn't hear from them as promised, I called on Friday, only to find out they had NO clue how to process the repair. It sat there, with NOTHING done to it, because they didn't know what to do and didn't have sense enough to call Speeco and ask! They did NOTHING from Tuesday to Friday when I called them! Then they did nothing until Speeco called them!

That was late Friday, and I was swamped Monday, so on Tuesday morning (a week after taking it in), I called Speeco and explained the situation, and they volunteered to fax a copy of the procedures to the repair shop. (Maxx Powersports in Winchester, VA.) Based on my conversation with the repair guy at Maxx, I asked if someone at Speeco could CALL Maxx and walk them through the process. (I didn't think they would be able to follow written instructions. I'm serious.) The gal at Speeco cheerfully agreed to do that. And apparently, did so, because things started happening then. The replacement beam was shipped pretty quickly (by Speeco) and installed after a while by Maxx. Uh, NOT quickly, but not too bad, either.

What really held things up was the detent valve. It had been leaking, more and more each time I used it, until the last day I used it it was just pouring out fluid. While I had Speeco on the I asked about it, and they said they'd had a bad batch of o-rings in some of the valves, and would replace it under warranty. I was just under the 1 year limit on the hydraulics, but I have a feeling they'd have taken care of it even if I'd been past warranty. They volunteered the info about a known problem and got it taken care of. That's good customer service in my book.

Apparently the warranty procedures are a bit different on the hydraulics, though. The valve had to come from TSC. That's where things got hairy, and TSC shone. I had to bug Maxx and get TSC to bug Maxx to get things going. Maxx seemed to assume that TSC would just somehow 'know' to ship a valve, and so things sat again until I made more phone calls. Without going into a phone call by phone call rundown, I'll just say that the manager at TSC was on the ball. He returned phone calls promptly, checked on status and called back when he said he would, and in every way earned my repeat business.

Maxx? Well, they were never rude, but they sure didn't make things happen, and they didn't return calls when they promised to.


So, final analysis:

I'm very happy with my splitter, and would not hesitate to buy another Speeco product.

Thanks to all of you who encouraged me to contact them!

Carolyn, thanks very much for checking in here. I didn't see your post until to day. As you can see, all is well now.

While we're on the subject of design changes, I echo a suggestion made earlier in the thread. The toe plate needs more teeth. It would really help.

I'd also like to see an hour meter on the engine.

I do love your built in log cradle, and I think your design in this area is far superior to anybody else's. The way this holds the wedge is a much better idea than the typical bolted on wedges, in my opinion. It works very well.

Wonderful!
Now, Mark, while you have been getting Speeco's attention and service, I have managed to collect seven more cords of huge rounds that range from 12" to 30" in diameter. They need your attention immediately, but I can't figure out if it's better for me to ship the rounds to Virginia via rail freight or for me to arrange a UPS pickup and have your splitter transported to Nebraska. opcorn:

:greenchainsaw: Good deal!