As usual, Kaingaroa puts on the good weather and the great ground conditions.There is no mud, and hardly a speck of dust to be seen, as we venture into the smoothly operating Thomassen crew, just off the Million Dollar Highway between Murupara and Kawerau. Our target today is the robust and powerful looking John Deere 953M, coupled with a New Zealand-made Quadco QB4400 fixed felling head.
The 9 litre, 330HP, John Deere is running three hydraulic pumps, 532 litres per minute (l/min), 114 l/min and 135 l/min. It impresses with its seamless power delivery and its diversification as a bulldozer, with the Quadco proving very useful to clear excess slash to make way for the skidder, and also push in rough access tracks to assist felling and extraction with the skidders. And speaking of skidders, Terry Duncan from Brandt Rotorua, is on hand to show us around the 953M today and he tells us there is a new John Deere skidder model being released later this year, so we are keen as mustard to get our hands on that when it arrives.
Operator, Jody London, chose the non-levelling base because it is what he prefers and is used to, so the bulldozer side gig makes sense from that angle too. In this pumice/ash ground, there is practically zero erosion as it is so free draining.
The large capacity Quadco QB4400 fixed felling head is obviously built to handle the toughest of felling jobs, with serious steelwork plain to see from a long way off. With the large customised slew bearing, three heavy-duty slew motors, and 255° of saw bar rotation, the QB4400 is a great choice for controlled felling applications with minimal stem breakage, and we see this on arrival as Jody is carefully laying down the tall and mature Kaingaroa stems like clockwork.
The 953M has been in production for a while, but this is the first one we have had the opportunity to have a look at, as there are not a lot of them in New Zealand. The best estimate is there have been just three brought in new so far, and this is the only one running the short and stout boom configuration for the extra strength required for these fixed heads.
At around 33 tonnes, the 953M sits between the smaller 903M (30 tonnes) and the larger 959M (37 tonnes). The 953M boom looks like it’s off a mining digger, and the fixed head is just a tank of a gadget, built strong to handle 40m of stem leaning hard on it and that staunch boom and stick from a great height.
Connecting the two is a “bucket ram”, via a dog bone system, similar to an excavator bucket configuration. There is also a massive slew bearing on the fixed head that looks like it’s off a 20 tonne digger. This handles the day-to-day rotations of the head, and also softens the blow when a stem goes sideways. Jody points out the challenging nature of the stand, with tight stocking, no...
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