Green-Power America 5 in. Diameter 420cc Gas Wood Chipper Shredder, Electric Start

Used less than 100 hours and the drum has developed a split rendering the machine unusable. Sticks get caught in the crack and will bind up.

It will be a few months before I actually use this thing. Need the leaves down in the overgrown area that I want to thin out so I can see what I’m doing. Having said that, I can only comment on the unpack and put together part for now. This thing is a beast. I think I over bought and under-estimated what I was getting into. It’s really heavy (415+ pounds) but built like a tank. Really. The working section is mostly thick welded steel sections. The inlet chute is sheet metal, very heavy, almost too much, the exit chute is smaller and thankfully lighter. The chipping mechanism is a two bladed heavy steel rotor drum with large reversible knives which are held on with substantial bolts. The drum rides on good sized ball bearings with grease fittings no less! The chipper is driven with a 420cc single cylinder OHV engine, key start electric. It reminds me quite a lot of the Briggs & Stratton 420 motor on my snowblower, but is not a B&S motor. The motor drives the chipper drum with two B series V belts. The tension adjustment for the belts is sort of a mystery, as there is not an obvious means to do so, and even at the limit of travel to move the motor back and forth on slotted holes to make adjustments, the belts seem to me as to be over tightened. When I got the belts off the pulleys, with hand rotation of the chipper drum I could hear something rattling around inside the drum, making a metallic sound. After a couple of hours puzzling this situation out, I find the drum is a completely closed shut weldment, with no hope of gaining access to the interior. I was hoping for a way to look inside the drum with a borescope but there are no holes to allow that, even removing one of the bolts securing the blades are blind holes so no access that way. It’s likely that running the machine with what seems to be a small unknown thing inside the rotating drum encased in a substantial welded steel box would not be an issue…but I would love to know what is rattling around in there. So, here we are. A beast of a chipper with a mystery, has yet to be run, and not sure where to go from here. I can say that the shipping was very good, tracking its progress across country was really easy, and it comes in a nice crate which is too much fun to open up! I’m wondering about a warranty return/replacement what with the thing rattling around in there. How in the world does one do a return with the crate in shambles, and the machine now in a basket case.

Excellent machine. But there’s an issue with the electric start shut down system.

This is one of the best machinery that I have purchased or owned. It has a bigger motor than I thought and is easy to put together without specific instructions.