I've run quite a few grinders and my employer's Carlton SP4012s are the biggest pieces of junk I've ever run! He's had 2 of them and I've never known a grinder could go through so many belts, pulleys, polychains and sheaves in my life. Every hundred hours or so we're replacing 1 or the other. I don't ever take the grinder out without bringing the entire socket set along, as it seems we rarely make it thru a week without having to wrench on something. The polychain enclosure driving the cutting wheel fills up with debris in the blink of an eye and must be unbolted and cleaned out frequently, otherwise you rapidly eat up the expensive polychain and sheaves. The safety latch on the slide system which tensions the cutter belts doesn't have enough adjustment built into it to accommodate both new or worn belts, so we've had to either cut it down shorter when a new belt is put on, or weld it up longer as the belts wear and stretch. Several times. The fuel tank only holds enough for several hours of grinding, nowhere near enough for a day's worth of work. The turning radius on it is horrible, the visibility of the cutter head is non-existent, the guard over the cutter wheel extends too far down. It will start hitting the top of the stump as soon as you grind several passes thus limiting your grind depth, but if you flip it up you'll spew chips everywhere. As you grind deeper into the ground, the left/right swing cylinders come down and hit the top of the frame with every swing, thus wearing away at both frame and cylinder and greatly limiting your swing radius as you get deeper. And many of the hydraulic hoses were seemingly routed with no thought or foresight, dragging back and forth across the frame and drive wheel fenders with every swing, wearing holes in the hoses. The chip containment curtains under the swing frame leave a lot to be desired and you'll regularly get pelted in the face while grinding. Did I mention I hate it???
Like I said, I've run a number of Rayco and Vermeer machines and have never had half this many problems or 1/10 this level of frustration and hatred towards a machine. I did a bunch of looking/talking at TCIA and really liked the looks of both the Bandit 2550 and the Rayco RG45 Super Jr., for that size machine and am trying to convince the boss to schedule some demos of those 2. I'm pretty confident they'll grind circles around the Carlton.
