Day 86 - GAME CHANGER for my trails - LaneShark LS3

Hey folks, how you doing? Hopefully you're all having a great day today. In this video, I want to introduce you to a new piece of the puzzle, a new implement that I think will be an MVP on our property. We have a little bit more than three miles, I'm sorry. We currently have a little bit more than two miles of trails and when it's all said and done, we'll have more than three miles of trails. And with all those trails comes trail maintenance. The groundwork is the easiest because basically you just hook something to the back of the tractor, whether you want to cut or shape, and you just drive, super easy. But when it comes to all that overgrowth that comes in from the top and from the sides, that has to be managed somehow. And up until this point, I've been using a pole saw. It gets the job done, but when you have so many trails like I do, it's not fun at all, it just isn't. So that's where this piece of equipment comes into play. This is a Lane Shark LS3. So Lane Shark is a brand, LS3 is the model. It is a made in the USA, hydraulically powered, articulating rotary cutter. So if you look at this compared to the front of my tractor here, this loader, this doesn't seem that particularly wide. This is in the 30s, I forget exactly what it is, 34, 36 inches. This is not a volume type of a cutter. You're not gonna use this if you want to cut a tremendous amount. This is a precision type of cutter. Where exactly do you want to do the cutting? So the fact that it's mounted on the front loader of your tractor, just in this horizontal state, gives you a little bit more precision as to what you want to attack and what you want to cut. But it's not just limited to this position right here. Like I said, this articulates. So this whole thing can shift out to the side and you can cut it in a side horizontal position or like it's in its most commonly sought after orientation would be in the side vertical orientation over here, way off over here, actually off camera. And that's so that you can cut that overgrowth that starts to come in from the trails. You can cut it up high like a pole saw, but much faster and much easier because you're sitting on your butt in the tractor seat rather than walking with a pole saw in hand. Two days ago, I received this Lane Shark. It was too late in the day to start actually installing it. So yesterday I started installing this. Super easy installation, by the way, really, really easy. And I'll walk you through that in just a second. And I say, I'll walk you through it because I tried to record the process. However, I am on borrowed land right now. We are currently on the in-between property where we're camping on relative's land. They were nice enough to let me use their tractor shed to install this. However, it's hay season where I'm at right now. They're cutting hay. There's four tractors in and out with cutters, with a rake, with the baler, and then taking a break for lunch and all this stuff. Tractors in, tractors out, tractors in, tractors out. It's impossible to record a video and record narration during all that chaos. So shortly after I started with the cameras, I just threw in the towel. So rather than having an actual installation video, let me switch over to the GoPro on my head and I'll walk you through the process of what everything, what needs to happen, because there is something very specific about this particular cutter, this hydraulic powered motor, I should say. And that is a continuous flow kit for the third function kit that I already have. Anyway, let me switch cameras and we'll talk about everything. This obviously connects to the loader of your tractor. In my case, I have a bad boy tractor and we use the skid steer quick connect system. No skid steers. This is not made for skid steers. However, I'm using the skid steer quick connect attachment. You'll also notice these hooks and these pins down here. Don't quote me on this, but I think this looks like the John Deere quick attach system. I think, I don't have a John Deere tractor, but I think that's what this looks like. And I guess this is compatible with both John Deere as well as the skid steer quick connect. Look it up if you have a John Deere, don't quote me on that. But it's worth noting that you see these hooks, what happens if this cylinder closes even further and these curl up real close? Are they going to hit this? Well, it depends on your tractor setup. Some of them do hit. And I know that because there was a sticker on here that said check for clearance, as far as these hitting your loader arms here. And if it does hit, feel free to remove those, cut those off. In my case, with this closed all the way, there's about a 16th of an inch or an eighth of an inch gap in between. So I don't have to remove those, but just make sure that you check on your particular tractor. For reference sake, this is a bad boy tractor with a BBL 400 loader. So with this loader, we shouldn't have any issues with this touching, with it interfering and whatnot. So just keep that in mind. So how do we power this whole system? Like I said, this is powered by hydraulics. Everything's labeled in the kit. You simply follow instructions and look at stickers. It's so easy to install this. On the deck here, I have one side that is a return side, one side that is a pressure side. And that's pressure and that's return. So whatever hoses are labeled pressure and return, you hook them up on those sides. All these hoses have labels and I'd show them to you, but they're inside this hose wrap that I have installed. Now, this much hose, keep in mind that as you move this and articulate this, this hose will go in a different position. So just be mindful of where the hose goes. Obviously with the front right here, this can actually get down there and maybe touch the blades. So just be mindful of where the hoses go and you'll be good. So as we trace the hoses back away from the motor, it goes into this check valve assembly here. So this was provided. It's a check valve with a return and a pressure T on each side. And you, again, hook up the hoses according to return or pressure and make sure that the orientation is proper here. There is a set of instructions that come with the whole kit that's got this all diagrammed out as well. So I had to attach these four hoses to it. Super easy to do. I believe this is a seven eighths of an inch diameter wrench and you put a three quarter inch wrench on here to hold it and you can tighten it down very, very easily. Again, these are labeled pressure and return going away from us. This section over here is a little bit longer and it goes into your connection point for your third function on the tractor. So this initially did not come with the tractor. I installed a WR long third function kit. Now a third function kit allows you to have hydraulics at the front of your tractor to do another function. In this case, I had only two lines coming in and a bracket that only had two holes in it. So LaneShark supplies a larger bracket that has this fitting, the return line fitting already installed in the bracket. There is another hole here for something that I think, something else that LaneShark is using. Not for this particular setup though. And then of course the two original lines over here. Now the return line, we trace this back and I just zip tied that hose to the other third function kit hoses and they all terminate right here at the third function kit. So let me briefly talk about this kit because it's not factory on this tractor and you may also have to purchase the third function kit as well as the continuous flow, which is necessary for this particular setup. So I already had the third function kit. That means I already had these two hoses on bottom and these two hoses on top. This I added when I did the install. So this third function kit takes power or hydraulic fluid from the power beyond port on your loader controls. So this is your, in my case, it may be different than whatever loader you have, but this loader, the bad boy tractor with the BBL 400 loader and if I'm not mistaken, this is basically a Branson tractor. So Branson should be identical to this. This is your power beyond port. This is where you get power for any implement beyond the loader. Makes sense, right? So the fluid goes through here and it comes down this hose into this side right here. And then from this inside the valve body, it's got the option to go to A or B. These two hoses right here, which was my third function kit. Now to control that, there's a module right here. These wires get traced back into the joystick and the typical joystick for a third function kit has two buttons on this side. I'm not sure if you can see that. I'm not in the right position that there's two buttons on this side and you just click it, each one of the buttons, if you want to have fluid go through this line or fluid go through that line. And what it does in my case is it either opens the grapple or closes the grapple regardless, that is not a continuous flow. That is simply telling the hydraulic fluid to do this function or to do that function. That's why we need a second kit to add to this third function kit. And that's called a continuous flow or a C flow kit. You want to have continuous flow of hydraulic oil going through, hydraulic fluid going through this motor to keep this motor spinning. You can't just simply hold the button down and try to do a lot of cutting with the button held down. Also, if I'm not mistaken, if you try to hold the button down for so long, I think there's a heat issue with that. Don't quote me on that, but I do know that going through this continuous flow kit, there is no heat problems at all. So what do we have to change? What did I have to change from this third function kit to add the C flow attachment? Well, this module right here is changed and the joystick handle is changed. The joystick handle is the same with those two buttons on the other side that you can't see. It's like right here, right here on the other side, but it also adds this other button that I have on the bottom side. Now you can position this any way you want. I prefer to have the two major buttons for the third function kit on the left side so I can use my thumb to access either one of them. And then this is not going to be used. This button's not going to be used constantly. It's just going to turn it on and turn it off. So I'm okay with that button being on the bottom side. But when this is all installed correctly, if you triple click this, one, two, three, key is off, one, two, three, it'll light up with a green ring around it and it'll turn on the motor. It'll send fluid through the line continuously. And then it continuously comes back through this return line. Now this return line, which let me back up again right here, this is your A and B or A and B, depending on which one you hooked it up to, your A and B from the third function. And this is your return. So we have fluid running back through here on this return. It comes into another check valve because we don't want fluid to go in the backwards direction. And then there's another quick connect right here. So if you want to remove your loader, you're not tied in, you can quick connect just the way you can up here on top. Comes into this elbow, into this T, and then this is the return going down to the reservoir or the tank. Now you have to take this hose off right here off of the valve body up here to install this T. For me, I had to take this off because this T won't spin around to assemble into here. So you take this knob off, this comes out, you got to replace this anyway. So that has to come off anyway. And then you can install this particular T. If you take this T off of the 90 degree assembly here, that's basically all you have to do. I did take this part off right here, but honestly, I don't think I actually had to do that. You know what? Maybe I did. There's a shaft that comes down and I didn't check interference whether or not this would interfere with that shaft. So you may have to take this off as well. Just these four bolts right here, super easy to do. All right, so you install the T, then put the elbow and all this stuff back on, and then you're basically plumbed up and ready to go. At that point, all you have to do is just a little bit of electrical work. Super, super, super easy. Don't freak out if you're not good with electronics. So this right here needs to be replaced. You get a new one supplied with the kit. Be sure that these screws are installed properly because these are grounding screws. They go through a piece of metal on the inside of this, and that's where they get ground onto this module. This comes down and it connects into this, what looks like a little USB connection, but it's just two wires or a couple of wires. I forget exactly how many is in there. And then that needs to be connected. So all of this plugs into your joystick. Now, your joystick has a few wires coming out. You see this green wire right here? It's actually coming out on one side. I looped it back in and stuck the other end of it in there because it's not needed for this particular setup. This joystick is used for a few different Lane Shark models. So in my case, this green wire is not needed. Now, I have a couple of different wires that are needed here. So we have, let's see, I believe this thicker wire right here that one goes to this connection going to this module. Then we have another thicker wire by itself that's double shielded, and that is your battery wire. This gets fused and goes directly to the positive side of your battery. Inside here is both a positive and a negative. So you, of course, the negative needs to go to ground and the positive needs to go to an accessory circuit. So what is an accessory circuit? Well, that's when the switch, when the key is turned on. When the key is turned on, all of your accessories are powered. When the key is turned off, all of your accessories are not powered. So the positive in here does not need to be powered 24 seven like this other double shielded wire does. So that's it. Two wires here, one wire here, an electrical connection. Super, super easy to hook this up. Just find an accessory wire for your positive. I tied into the fuel pump because it's right down there and it just made sense to tie into that. Also, a fuel pump is one of those things that it's super easy to diagnose because if you turn the key on, you can hear it clicking. You hear that clicking? Not the buzzer beeping, but the actual clicking sound. That's the fuel pump. So because I have it tied into something that's super easy to diagnose, if there's a problem, I can figure out whether or not I'm getting actual power from the source, which is the fuel pump. Anyway, I found that to be an easy source to connect to. A little bit of zip tie management here and there to get it zip tied up here. You got locking screws to put your knob on your handle and that's it. I mean, this is a super, super easy install. Now, taking into consideration, I already had the WR-Long kit installed. So the third function kit from WR-Long, I already had that installed. All I needed to do was modify it for this C flow, the continuous flow. And that's basically it. It's a very, very simple installation. Installation was easy. It's installed. So how are we actually going to use this? Like I said, you can use it in this front horizontal location to be a little bit more precise as to what you want to attack versus having some big rotary cutter on the backside that you have to turn around for. And it's a little bit different. Now, yes, you are going to compare this to a rotary cutter, but understand that they're two completely different beasts. One that hooks up to your three-point hitch in the back, PTO powered versus this one up here. Two completely different beasts here. So you can cut in the front like this. Let's move it around a little bit and I'll show you how to change this into different configurations for different tasks that you want to do. So to change the position, you put it in this orientation, let it dangle down, let gravity, let this up here do all the work against gravity. Obviously you want to do this with the tractor turned off. So keep that in mind and take that into consideration. If you're doing a bunch of high RPM work and then you want to make a quick change to this, turn your tractor off. But before you turn your tractor off, if you're doing a bunch of high RPM work, let it idle down for like a minute or so because all your engine oils and fluids moving around inside the engine help cool off all of the components. You can cause damage to your engine if you run it at a high RPM for quite a long time and you build up the operating temperature and then you just shut it off. Let it cool down for a second if you got to make a change like this, but turn the tractor off. So to make this articulate, where there's a couple of different pins on this side, we'll pull a pin out and you might've saw it go forward just a little bit. Again, every time you move this, you're going to want to keep an eye on all these on the hydraulic lines and just make sure nothing gets pinched. But we're coming way over here all the way over 180 degrees. Now it's not locked into place just yet. There's another pin on this side that you kind of can't see. I'll do all this again once the GoPro or with the GoPro on my head so you can see it firsthand. But there's pins up here on top. Again, I'll show you in just a second that lock the position in. We'll lock that particular pin. And now it is in the wrong orientation. So again, I'll show you in just a second, but there's another pin on this side that you remove and slide it out this way. On this side, there are locations to put these pins so you don't lose them. There's one. The second one is on the other side over there. I'll put this other pin in place. That way I don't lose it. And then one more thing to lock it into position. And that is another arm that again, I'll show you in just a second. But I wanna give you a outside perspective. There you go. It is, I think it's locked into place, is it? Yes, it is absolutely locked into place. Now you can use the curl on the bucket to position it where you want to. I'm gonna move those around so it doesn't get pinched. You can see how you can attack different heights of trees coming in from the side or vegetation coming in the side. And you can mow off to one side. Now from my position, from where I'm standing right now, from my position, the whole deck and from where I'm sitting on the tractor, the whole deck shields all the debris from coming back at the operator. Obviously you'd still probably wanna wear some type of PPE, some eye protection at the very least. But this is so cool. I'm excited. All the stuff coming into the trails will be able to cut it very, very easily sitting in the seat of the tractor versus walking with a pole saw. I'm gonna switch back over to the other camera, reverse all this and then put it back into orientation. That way you can see how easy it is from a first person perspective. All right, we've just got our cutting done and we want to put it up for the day. So first thing, let's crank up the tractor, lift it up, curl the bucket forks down so that the skid steer quick connect is horizontal. Turn off the engine and let's get these pins out. I'll hold onto these pins. There's one pin there, another pin here, this pin on this folding bar goes back like so. Now this can fold shut like so. And you see this latch right here? I've walked around to the other side to get it latched. We'll put that pin in, lock it in. Now we can fold this all the way back, but we have this adjustment pin right here that we need to take this pin out. It's spring loaded. So if I go to the bottom side and pull down, you'll see there's another hole right there. Put the pin back into there. Now we're locking it in the disengaged position, which will allow us to slide this this way and put this bar into that notch, locking it in place with that pin. All right, so now you know what? We've got to do a little bit of a hose wiggling around like so, but darn, we forgot something right in front of us that we have to cut in the horizontal position. All right, there you go. Now we can attack some stuff from the front, making sure that these hoses, like I said, are out of the way. It doesn't hurt to keep a couple bungees on your tractor. This one right here, I keep in place for these hoses for my grapple. So keep a bungee on hand. It'll help you manage those hoses. I wanted to curl the bucket up all the way really quick because I wanted to show you again how close we are. Actually, this one touched. Ah, so it shifted a little bit from yesterday when I messed with this. So it did touch. Yep, that's touching, but the cylinder has about an eighth of an inch more to go maybe. This side over here, this side over here is not touching. So I may have to cut those off, I'm not sure, but I wanted to actually show you that. So, well, that's new information. All right, so now first person, let's get it set up. It's the reverse of what I just did. I like to lift it up so that the quick connect bucket, or I'm sorry, the quick connect plate is at about eye level. Just makes the process a little bit easier to walk underneath. So I'll go right about there. All right, first pin we got to remove locks the major swivel. So let's unlock that, slide this out. And you know what? I'm just going to put this right back where it was. There's a, I was putting it right here when it's all open, but I'll just put it right back where it was. Slide this over, making sure that the hoses don't have any problems. Now this pin goes into one of these detents. Now keep in mind, I'm only showing you this one. There's several different positions that you can choose. Let's just say, instead of you wanted to cut vertical, you wanted to cut on an angle to go on the side of a bank somewhere, or maybe on the angle the other direction, you can do that as well. But I will slide this until that pin locks. Pin is locked into position. Now let's lock the actual pin. There we go. One more pin to move over here. Slide this around. And now it's this pin right here. We can pull down, take this out, pull this out, push this out of the way. And this is the spot where it was connected. So I'll just put that pin right back where it was. Now we need to stop this movement. And this movement is stopped with this bar right here. This bar goes over to here. And there you go. You gotta move one, two, three, four pins to get this thing completely set up, which really isn't much at all. Let's make sure we have some extra slack there and watch that before I, or watch that hose as I make this curl. And there we go. Keep in mind that this is a hydraulic, that hydraulic motor runs on hydraulic pressure. Well, your hydraulic pressure will change when you change your RPMs. So you wanna put your RPMs up after this is engaged or I guess it doesn't matter when it's engaged, but put your RPMs up when you wanna actually do some cutting. I'm going to record this actually spinning a little bit. So when you first hook this up, you may have some air in your lines and to get the air out, you can press one of your third function buttons, depending on which one you press, it'll put fluid through the line and get all the air out. So for me, that was my top button. Bottom button doesn't do anything. So I've already bled all the air out of the system. I see that it works. To engage it, I'll triple click the button on the bottom of the joystick. One, two, three. Now hands off the joystick, it's still running, but my RPMs are down at idle. You can see the difference once you idle up or throttle up. So one thing to note here, not only did I power down the hydraulics, but I just went ahead and shut off the whole engine and you can see it spun down quite a while. So just because you turn this off doesn't mean that thing's not spinning. It still takes a little while for that thing to spin down. And I wanna bring that to your attention because on the front side, let me bring this down so I can walk around it. On the front side, you need to understand that these blades stick out of the front of this guard here by a couple of inches. Let me reposition the camera and I'll show that better. It's important to understand that this front deck of the cutter is inset a little bit so that these blades stick out past it. And that's on purpose, big time on purpose because in this vertical orientation, you want to come up to a tree limb or whatever and just chop it off so it falls. If this was pushed out forward like a typical rotary cutter is, then all that vegetation would bend away from the cutters and be less likely to cut until it comes way over here, passes that front edge and then shoots back into the cutters over here. You don't want that. You simply just want to drive up to it and cut it off. So keep that in mind. The blades stick out further than a typical rotary cutter would stick out. Actually, they don't stick out on a typical rotary cutter. But it's also worth noting that unlike most rotary cutters which have a discharge in the front as well as the backside, all of this is enclosed. So the backside and both sides are enclosed. So you shouldn't get much debris at all shooting back towards the operator. Everything should either fall or be shot forward. Or in this case, the rotation of the blades is going down. It should be shot down. It's really important to understand that. You don't want to be on the front side of this thing at all. Don't be on the front side or real close to any rotary cutter, but this one especially. Like I said, well, I think I said it. I'm not exactly sure if I said it. This is not my property. This is the in-between property that we are camping on. And I don't have time to go out to our property today. I've got a, now it's a two hour window before rain sets in and rain's gonna be here for the next four days. So I don't have time to go out there. Instead, I do want to tinker with this. I do want to test that out right here on the property that I'm on. So I've got this overgrowth area right behind me, right where I started the video. I'll use the cutter in the horizontal position to knock all this down and just get a little bit of experience in this regard. One thing that you never do is you never bite into an apple and think, dang, this is such a horrible orange. An orange tastes so much better at being an orange, the taste of an orange, than this apple does. You don't compare those two. An apple's an apple, an orange is an orange. They're completely different. Yes, they both are fruit, but they're completely different. Well, I bring that up because I've seen a couple of comments on other people's videos showing this, that, oh, my rotary cutter can do that. I don't need to buy that. My rotary cutter can do all this. You could have saved so much time just using a rotary cutter. Well, yeah, for flat horizontal stuff, but that's not where this particular machine shines. It did a good job right here as far as just knocking this down. Don't confuse this, again, with a finish mower. It's not gonna be a finish mower, but this is down low enough to where I wouldn't mind driving over it with my riding lawn mower. This is the orientation where it's really going to shine. A pull-behind rotary cutter can't do that. End of story. An apple doesn't taste like an orange. End of story. So while there are some similarities, this is where it's completely different. The second thing that I want to kind of experiment with is in the vertical position. Again, I'm going to put this thing to use big time on the property, but for right now, there's a couple areas around this property that as the tractor drives around closer to these trees, if you're bush hogging or using a rotary cutter, I should say, then these trees, the limbs that are coming down, they're technically not in the way if my ROPS, the rollover protection system, ROPS, if it was down, I could get around these very easily. But when the ROPS are up, it's quite annoying to have your eyes and your focus and your attention down on the ground as far as what you're doing, what you're cutting, and then one of these branches gets tangled up or whacked into the ROPS and then it smacks you in the head or something like that. It is kind of annoying. So with that in mind, I'll go ahead and take some practice cuts, I guess you could say, some quick experience cuts in the vertical position and see what we can do. Well, this is, this is definitely a very cool tool. And for me, on my trails, this is gonna be so productive. Unfortunately, I can't take this to my land right now and start cutting up on them trails, which I really, really, really want to do. I gotta wait a few more days. If you're interested in more about this particular machine, I'll have a link to Lane Shark's website. And I don't make anything on their sales. I'm not an affiliate by any means. I am working with them for some marketing videos to pay for this. That being said, I encourage you to, if you are interested in more information on this particular machine, click through the link that I have in the description below. It's not an affiliate link at all, but it's just a tracking link. It just tracks how many people click through it. That type of information is very, very important for small businesses like myself or Lane Shark, small businesses to really figure out where their traffic is coming from. So again, I don't make anything on their sales. If you wanna buy this thing, cool. If you don't wanna buy this thing, cool, no sweat off my back. Like I said, I am paying for this via marketing videos. So that being said, subscribe if you wanna see more of this stuff, because maybe not the next video, but definitely within the next few videos, this will be out on the trail and I will be cutting a lot of stuff with it. I learned a little bit with this right here. The curl of the bucket plays a role as to how well you can attack the cut. So it's a learning experience and I'm looking forward to learning a little bit more with it. That's it for this video. You guys check out the link in the description. Like I said, if you're interested in more, subscribe if you wanna see more of this, take care, have a great day and I'll talk to you in the next video.