Hi, I'm Ted from Everything Attachments, and we're here today with our new cement mixer that we've gotten in. We've dealt with this company before out of Italy, but they've made us a bigger one. We've been asking for a larger cement mixer so this is the new BM 350. And it'll actually hold a full half a yard of concrete. One thing to keep in mind, a half a yard of concrete's over a thousand pounds, so this shouldn't be on a small compact tractor. Some of the mega-compacts, the really large compacts can handle it and then larger tractors up to 70 or 80 horsepower haven't been a problem. Bigger tractors than that are probably gonna get more clumsy, and the hitch is gonna get bigger than where you wanna go with cement in most cases unless you're just carrying it somewhere from a truck and dumping it.
But this new one that holds a half a yard, we've been looking for a long time. And I just wanna go over some of the things including how you're gonna set your hitch and so forth. It comes with a single action cylinder, meaning it only gives it power one way and that's gonna be to pull the mixer from its dumping position back up, to bring the weight back up. When you get ready to dump it and put the cement out, the weight of the cement will allow this cylinder to relax and let it dump down slowly. So you need a...if you have some of the older tractors, they actually have a screw on your remote valve that is meant for a one-way cylinder, like for the old sickle-bar mowers to let the mower down. If you've got a new model tractor, if you got a farm tractor it probably has that. If you got some of the utility tractors or something, the economy tractors, if it doesn't have that feature, you can still just put it in the down position for a minute until it gets down there, it will be putting your tractor in a high pressure mode on that one side of the outlet because it's not letting the fluid out. But it will let the fluid continue to go back into your tractor. Just letting you know that.
On this new one, you know, it's a bigger diameter. It is gonna be pretty heavy so it probably needs to be on a 4,500-pound tractor or so to be safe with it. It's got all the beaters in there. And I've used the box mixers, like what are usually on a skid steer can also go on the front of a tractor if you've got enough hydraulics to run it. And they work, they work pretty good, but this really does...if you're trying to mix up a lot of it, this'll actually mix it. You know, if you're carrying it from one place to the other, the hopper has more capacity, it'll hold about a yard if you've got a skid steer or a really big... But on this style here, as far as taking Sakrete or cement, mixing it with your gravel or your sand, it just simply does it faster.
It also carrying half a yard at a time, if you're gonna take it from a truck to somewhere you can't get to with a heavy cement truck, it also works well for that. Comes with your drive shaft and that's one of the critical things we're gonna talk about. All right, so your drive shaft's gonna hook down here on your main drive, and as you can see this cover right here, that's covering up a really big sprocket with a chain on it and the reason the sprocket is so big is so the drum will turn slow. So there's a lot that has to be set up here before you want to determine your drive shaft length.
So, it's all in your manual, it's a lot to read, you probably should read it and then still listen to what I'm saying and get all of your leverage points correct on your tractor before you decide at all what drive shaft length you need, because you've got three top-link holes, you've got four bottom pinholes, and just depending on the geometry of your particular tractor, every tractor's different, between where your lift arms are on your tractor, to how high your top link is, to how long your lift arms are, everything changes. So what I recommend doing is once I think I've got the right setting here, looking at the book, then putting this on. And then what I want it to do, even empty, when you've got your leverage perfectly right and you wanna...it probably will not empty, okay? It might, but if it doesn't, what I usually do is take a water hose, put five gallons of water in it, give it a little bit of weight, something I can waste and throw away, get my linkage here, right, where it's gonna dump, raise up and down on your lift a little bit, you wanna keep that controlled. But if you're gonna have to lift it to get to do the job, whatever it is you're doing, then make sure you can do it and your leverage is working out right before you cut this shaft.
So once you've figured out that that's good and it will go down and dump, then your drive shaft is a critical place here where it does get closer to the tractor at places. So wherever it's the closest, you wanna make sure it's not bottoming it out. I've never had a case where the drive shaft wasn't long enough, but I've definitely had a couple people damage their mixer because they didn't cut their shaft properly. So there is a how to cut your drive shaft, but pretty simply, if you're drive shaft lacks two inches of going onto your shaft when you've got it at the perfect place, then you're simply just gonna pull it apart, cut two inches off of the plastic shield, then cut two inches off of the steel shield, off the steel center drive mechanism. And that has to be done to both or one's gonna bottom out. If you cut only one it will make absolutely zero difference. Two inches, if that's what you need, you've gotta cut two inches off of everything. Make sure you leave your long steel post out past your shield because you won't be able to line 'em up if you just cut both things the same length. It's really hard to line both things up at the same time.
So that being said, read your manual on this setting here, give us a call or an email, we'll be happy to make sure that this is right for your tractor. And just remember it does take a little bit of thought and a little bit of reading to get all of your linkages where it works. I've used these a lot, I've used them from everything from mixing, for putting up hundreds of feet of fence, to just simply carrying yards of concrete to another place I was pouring a pad. So they do work well, they're made in Italy, and at Everything Attachments, we try to carry the best stuff. Give us a call or an email, we'll be happy to help you with anything.
Let’s go Brandon 
350 cement mixer 
