Diversify or standardize

I want to repower my woodchipper with a little bit more powerful engine. It's got a 6.5hp that can be a bit slow.
If I add a second chipper blade and wanted it to turn a 1.5 inch stick into chips without barely slowing down I would need about a 20 to 27hp engine. Those 20 to 27hp engines are a lot of coin and that much power is a bit over kill. I think I'm just going to go smaller save a small pile of money and get most of what I need.
Either way I'll need to belt drive the wood chipper cutter head, the diesel engine top speed appears to be 3,000rpm, probably do a 1:1 or 6:7 underdrive. The predator top speed is 3,600 to 3,800rpm probably run a 6:7 underdrive.
So should I diversify or standardize?
They say "diversity is our greatest strength" when ever I try to get a breakdown of how that works I get a non sense answers, bulk/bull shit talking points and strawman arguments. Or standardize like militaries, because it works. Its worked for thousands of years and will probably work for a thousand more.
The diversity hire:
Will be slower.
A diesel 10hp yanmar clone.
It's a diesel.
Will likley need special accommodations. Probably has a 25mm shaft, not an immediate problem, not an advantage. I can make a 25mm bore pulley no problem right now, but in the future who knows.
Harder to motivate. Manual only starting.
The air cleaner is made of steel but is lame.
Not a great match for shoulders that are going bad.
Foot print bolt pattern? No idea.
No oil filter. Just splash oiling.
The standard:
Predator 459cc 15hp or honda gx390 13hp.
Have 1 of each and they work great.
My gx390 now self identifies as pressure washer, 5 to 10 years ago it was an air compressor, then last year it was a stump grinder.
$100 cheaper.
More power.
Both have a 1 inch shaft, which is my go to for most things. 3 engines all running 1 inch shafts is pretty convenient.
I can remember "1 inch" and it's hard to screw up "1 inch". Same size as mu dick.
459cc and gx390 use the same foot print.
459cc air cleaner is cheap plastic, boring, no thrills.
Gx390 air cleaner is sweet.
Uses same air cleaner setup as a honda, parts are not identical but whole assemblies can be swapped between engines. I may run the gx cyclone air cleaner on the woodchipper and put the boring predator air cleaner on the gx390 pressure washer since pressure washers aren't really known for making a lot of dust.
Predator engine has forced oiling, may be able to add a filter.
Most importantly it's got a HEMI, wooo!

 

So, 6.5 HP isn’t enough for soft tissue and bone? Who knew.

 

Tens or dozens of horse power would be ideal. But wood chippers like that cost as much as a car and I only need one to do "limbs".

 

Rental is your friend.

 

Back in the '70s we had a chipper that used an 8hp Briggs...that thing was a beast. 3 inch branches, no problem...but the head probably weighed in around 75 - 80 lbs.

ETA: Took a few minutes to recall, but it was made by Kemp.

 

If I get a rental around here it might not start.
If I rebuild my old one which is only from like 2019 I'm 80% of the way to a bigger one.
Rentals around here suck. That's why I built my stump grinder.
3 days worth of stump grinder rent paid for mine.

 

On a serious note, beware that cranking the horsepower up significantly may result in other components of the chipper failing. The size of shafts, bearings, spacing between bearings, etc. are premised on how much torque and load those must transfer. Often the engine is sized such that it simply doesn’t generate more than those components can handle. Increase engine size a bunch and things may not hold up in the long term. Personally, I'd be looking for a pto driven chipper and run if off my tractor but maybe you don’t have one.

AT

 

The 6.5hp DR premier wood chipper has its cutter head directly mounted on the 7/8 inch engine shaft.
When I repower it I will have 2 or 3 one inch bearings supporting the 1 inch drive shaft.
The easy/lazy way to repower it would be to drop in the largest 7/8 shaft engine I can find in place of that 6.5. The most powerful 7/8 shaft engine I know of is a 9hp.
So with 9hp I might be able to keep it as a 1 cutter head and feed in a 1.25 inch stick at full speed.
Remember I want to add a second cutter head so it will do twice as much cutting at the same cutter head rpm and be able to wood chip a ready to burn 1.5 inch stick with out slowing down much.
The way it is now it peaks at 3,500 to 3,600 cuts per minute. If I underdrive it to 3,000rpm with 2 cutters it will do about 6,000 cuts per minute.
That's why I'm looking to triple it's engine power.
Maybe I'll find that the predator 459cc has plenty of power and I may just driven it 1:1.

I have a tractor but I don't care to run a wood chipper off it. PTO wood chippers start at a few grand.

 

Not sure I'd want to go with direct drive...one good jam could bend or break the crank. I would much prefer a belt drive to a chipper head mounted on pillow blocks. Plus you can vary speed via pulley size.

 

I have been diversifying a bit. I have a diesel generator now.
But even in this I have standardized. I am going with what I believe is the more common "long taper shaft" a 7/8 diameter 4 and 11/32 inch taper shaft engine to generator combo.
So when an engine or generator shits out I can swap them around.
I like this setup better for reasons.
If I had to use the generator engine for something else I could.
The "short taper shaft" engines have like an inch long shaft that tapers straight out of the engine case, ya good luck using that on anything else other than exactly what it was designed to go with.
At least I could cut down or cut a key on or throw a taper lock on the straight part of the shank of a "long taper shaft" engine and use it for pretty much anything else.

 

Another thing I'm standardizing on, vehicle batteries.
Back in 2021 at the height of the pandemic supply crisis the 12v battery in my car decided to take a shit.
It takes a group 51R, probably a metric size. I wanted a AGM group 51 or 51R. But no group 51 AGM batteries available anywhere. So I went with a U1 battery of AGM construction for a lawn mower, motor cycle, ect.
In my car all the 12v does is close like 7 relays to unlock the high voltage batteries and turn on some lights so going to a smaller battery won't hurt anything.
Well the riding lawn mower needs a battery, it uses a U1 also and I need a battery for my new generator. Might as well make them all U1 AGM.

 

Man no one in town had an AGM U1 or U1R battery, had to order one.
I'll put the new one in my car and the old on in the lawn mower.

 

When you value diversity over experience.


Every sub guy I have know is a white guy.

 

I have one odd ball gasoline engie left.
My gasoline powered air compressor has an old 5hp briggs from like the early 1980s.
Pull starting the air compressor kind of sucks so I'm thinking put a electric start yanmar diesel or electric start Honda clone.

 

Hard to beat the Honda engine, trick is shutting off the gas and let it run out rather than using the off switch.
Stabilize the fuel in the gas tank and store gas in a sealed container brim full (no air space,)
Diesel engines from my experience are a bit hard starting without electric starters.

 

Yeah that's what I do, hit the full shutoff and let it idle dry and gives the engine a chance to cool down a bit. Then before I run it again I put fresh gas in and open the fuel shutoff. They usually start first pull.

 

Standardize on regular unleaded gasoline.
No benefit to running premium gasoline in a stock small engine.

 

Standardize:
I wanted a fully adjustable air bleed carb for my gx390 which now identifies as a pressure washer . My gx390 had an "adjustable" air bleed, only 1/4 turn adjustable, which seemed to make no difference, since the idle on a pressure washer is usually 1,800rpm or more.
Well I replaced it with a fully adjustable air bleed carb. Then after I took off the old 1/4 turn one I noticed I could disable the air bleed limiter with my vertical 1 inch wide belt sander, so I did. Then I put that old, now adjustable gx390 carb on my 459cc woodchipper. Just put in a larger main jet, checked the low speed jet, they were almost identical in size, so I kept the smaller gx390 one in there.
So the gx390 and both 459cc engines will all run the same carb, aside from minor tuning differences.

 

Diversity hire aircrew puts their airplane in the water....
Oh and it's age restricted because it points out and makes fun of the navy posting about how the p8 air crews were all super diversity hires and how nothing bad had happened yet....


Babylon bee predicted this.
To be fair this is the only logical outcome.
So the bee had house odds on that one.