Used Bell Feller Bucher

[Newbie1]

Hi guys,
Newbie here.  I have a used Bell super T, air cool deutz diesel.  My question concerns the hydraulic system.  Seems to have some new hoses, some new fittings, some new seals.  The 7 operating levers are not identified as to operation and two levers are required for sawing a tree off.  Can anyone help tell me what the 3 levers on the left and 4 levers on the right operate.  The unit does drive and some function do work.  I'm adding hyd. Fluid and fixing some small leaks on the hose fittings right now.  Sweet machine.
I am a mechanic, electrician, machinist all from previous training/work experience.  I'm working full time and just purchased almost 200 acres.  I'm not interested in cutting alot but there are tons of trees that need to be cleaned up.  The land has been cut over time, probably 3 times.

[Gary_C]

One of those levers is for the ejection seat so make sure you are wearing your hard hat cause the roof of that machine is solid. 

Just kidding.  :D :D

I don't know the answer you are seeking but start pulling and pushing levers till you find out what each does. Or perhaps a moderator could move this topic to the Forestry and Logging board where someone might know the answer to your inquiry.

[AlexHart]

Well I'll try....  we'll see how my pathetic memory does.   Especially pathetic since I was just using mine 4 hours ago.  

From left to right. 

1) "swings" your dangle head up with power or drops it by gravity.    Note that with this lever you want to go VERY easy on it when you lift it.   Do NOT just pull it or you'll blow the **** out of something.   Easy does it.  

2) lifts and lowers the boom.   If your at all low on hyd fluid this will be the first thing to really get choppy.  

3)  This is your "main" saw lever.   If you push it forward you'll activate the saw but you will not "cut"   To really cut you need to push both this one and the one all the way to the right on the other side as well.    Also important here is that if you pull the lever backwards you'll spin the chain backwards slightly and the bar will pop out.   While this might sound silly at first its actually very handy to free up sticks or whatever other garbage might get pinned in there and I also use it as a "check" to see if my bar is loose or if the chain is solidly on the bar.   

Other side. 

4) This one turns your boom to the left and right.   

5) Opens and closes the grapple. 

6) This lever is the "skid link".... whatever the heck a skid link is.   99.999999% of the time you want this lever rammed forward where it will stay in detent or whatever you call it.   On the fairly rare occasion that you need to push your boom forward to grab some awkward angled tree or something you can take this lever out of detent and you can power your boom forward.    You do NOT want to cut things down like that normally though and I will often go entire running sessions without ever touching this lever. 

7) When your ready to smoke something you push this lever forward along with #3.  

I think that's right. 

To cut something down in an ideal world you want to grab ahold of what your cutting working with the lean and with your cutting head aimed to your right.   Having it aimed to the right gives you half a chance of seeing what the hell is going on which you will learn quickly is a good idea.   If its any kind of "real" tree grab it as hard as you can, give it some lift (contrary to a lot of what I've read you do not have to go crazy and lift the whole rear end of the machine up or anything but a little lift is pretty much mandatory), check your grab again and make sure your as tight as possible, say a prayer and saw it with levers 3 and 7.   After awhile this all pretty much becomes one fluid motion.  

Once you are confident your saw is going through start watching the tree, especially if your head is not aimed to the right.    When you fully cut it you'll see the whole trunk clunk down a little bit (maybe 1/2 inch or less but you'll see it)   That's your signal that you got it.  You want to make sure you lift slightly at that point to get your bar retracted safely and while making sure of that you concurrently want to start reading what is going on with the tree and do whatever is appropriate.    Spin it,   rip it back fast to try to lay it down, sometimes if its a big tree and I know my bar is safe I'll just release it to avoid the impact, etc.    There are 1000 different situations.

My humble opinion is that when you learn how to really run it your Bell is an awesome machine.    Very good for clearing the crap out of areas, you can kind of bunch hitches with it, and most importantly you can just make sure the trees get down on the ground and usually kind of aimed in the right direction.   Deep snow, nasty rocks, and nasty slopes defeat it but you can waddle around in some pretty tight spots and still be effective.   Back up slopes.   You can back up things 3X worse than you can drive forward and don't ever go too sideways on a hill or you'll go over... and over... and over...    

Good luck.