Chapin 8622B Made in The USA 2.2 Cubic Feet Tow and Pull Behind Spreader with Auto-Stop Dual Impeller That Stops When Not Moving, Designed for Farm and Tough Terrain, Hitch Pins, Black

This spreader is absolutely fantastic.1) The instructions to put it together were adequate but not 100% clear. It took me about an hour or so. Without power tools it would have been much longer with all of the bolts.2) The use of the machine is simple and extremely effective. I used it to put down grub preventer and killer as well as a weed and feed fertilizer behind a commercial grade zero turn. My grass area is about 3/4 acre. I was done with both in about an hour.3) The Auto stop feature is amazing. Absolutely no issues with piles of fertilizer anywhere. I used 3 as the spreader setting, and the delivery amount was perfect. When going from one area to another, where I didn't want any fertilizer, I set the spreader setting to zero.4) I have purchased hundreds of tools over the last 40 years. This is a top 5 purchase for sure and will save me huge time and money.

This spreader is destroying my expectations. I originally purchased and Agri-Fam unit which was a complete disappointment.Easily holds 3 full bags of fertilizer and if it's not moving the auger stops and nothing falls out of the spreader which is a cost saver.

- Don't be fooled by the presentation of the marketing and the NY domestic address. This is NOT US made, it's 100% Chinesium, says so all over the materials when you get it. I think the only thing made in the US is the manual, and that's printed in English, Spanish, and French. This says to me it's all made in China, then packed in the US for NA distribution.- Arrived open because it's so poorly packaged. By some miracle everything was still inside. I note that unlike another reviewer picture, this did NOT come in a branded box with pictures and whatnot like they show, it came in a plain brown box. Either there is massive inconsistency with their shipments, or the product has changed. Also the listing shows the thing is black, as is what I received, where those other reviews that are so much more favorable it's red. Seems pretty suspect.- Instructions reference part numbers but the blister pack of hardware has no such designations on it, so it's pointless. Clear disconnect when you make everything in China then throw in a manual in the US without making sure it all lines up.- Part of the unit has to be taken apart and put back together. On purpose, by the instructions. That makes no sense, just ship it in parts.- While it should be obvious, it's notable that there is no warning to check the tire pressure before use. They ship half pressure.- One wheel is held on with a heavy bolt, the other with a little cotter pin. This makes no sense, and is not the only inconsistency issue with quality.- Getting the hitch and frame to line up to bolt them together is very difficult and not clear in the instructions. There should be brackets rather than just trying to line up and bolt together tubes and panels. While they are 4 heavy bolts, they are the only thing taking all the vertical sheer force holding this thing together.- On the tubes, the bolt holes are recessed. This makes it extremely difficult to tighten the bolts as there are no lock washers, and the recesses are not notched to hold the bolt. You have to get in there with a needle nose to hold the thing while tightening the nut. Some of the bolts are twice as long as they need to be because they only provide one length for everything, so you're wrenching forever. Space is too tight for a power tool. Royal pain and lousy design.- There are two auger bits, you can only use one at a time. The smaller bit is pointless, it sits a couple inches from the drop opening so it wouldn't do anything. The larger bit is also pointless as it sits nearly 2 inches above the opening. Nothing is designed to actually help move material down the chute. This is bizarre as two minor changes would have made it so the auger actively sifts material out. This flaw makes the unit nearly useless as material just doesn't move through most of the time. I had to drive around 10x longer than I should have, at full speed, and only because of very lumpy ground bouncing material down did I eventually get the job done. Note the person who said it tipped over must have done something incredibly wrong. I had this thing nearly airborne hitting bumps, no issue with stability.- The flow control is cheap plastic with no actual release and lock mechanism. You simply crank it hard to ratchet the plastic teeth over each other and hope it doesn't break. Clearly this will wear out quickly. Given how heavy duty the rest of the materials are, making this dollar store cheap is unacceptable. And again even full open material fails to properly flow through because of the lousy auger design. This is in stark contracts to another review talking about an all metal mechanism where this is actually all plastic. Again, totally different product?? Honestly I'd say don't buy based on this shadiness alone unless you like gambling.- The rain cover is rectangular, the hopper is pentagonal, so it doesn't fit properly in the least.Because of the poor quality of critical parts, and the lousy functionality, it wouldn't be very good at half the price. At this cost, it's a complete ripoff and total waste of time and money. I believed some of the hype that indicates this is higher quality than other brands, and regret every bit of that choice. Instead of Chapin it should be called Cheapen.

Not sure why there was so much fuss in other reviews about putting this together; it seemed pretty straight forward to me although I'm used to this stuff so can imagine it might be difficult for the extreme novice.I will say having the proper tools certainly sped things up; drill driver bit with socket set, open wrenches, couple sets of pliers. Doing this with just 2 open faced wrenches would take forever.Ok the instructions are crap. Clearly this will be built upside down but the images are posted right side up. Classic case of engineers not communicating with designers. Easily remedied by just turning the instructions upside down but really stupid and unnecessary. Also noticed there's no recommended speed to run this in the instructions. Should this be run at 1 mph, 4 mph, 10 mph? From other reviews, looks like the tires will get in the way of the spread if run too slow so appears this should be run on the faster side but then need to worry about this being top heavy and tipping over/ front hitch plates bending and not up to the high torsion stress levels. And once again as with other spreaders, the application rate chart is a guessing game; fertilizer, insecticide, selective herbicide, etc bag gives you application rate per X sq feet but the instructions just give two options - seed or weed and seed which also differ in application rates. So what number do I put it on for granular insecticide?Here's the things I did after reading all the other premature failures. It's unfortunate I need to even do this stuff but it seems all other tow behind options on the general market have similar issues:- Grease the zerk fittings: I already have a grease gun from my lawn tractor so pumped a few each into the wheel bearings until I saw it starting to seep out. I then started pumping into the gear box... and pumped and pumped and pumped. To the point where nothing was coming out the sides like it normally would in any other zerk fitting. Was there any grease in here at all??? I actually stopped a few times and checked my gun to make sure grease was actually coming out/ was not empty. I must have pumped at least 20 times and still no grease coming out. And it's a wonder why everyone else's gear box is stripping/ seizing!!- Augur zip ties: It seems the augur does not scrape the bottom; another user added zip ties to the augur pointing down and to help feed out the hole on lower levels.- Mesh screen: Another user added in 3/4 steel mesh screen to prevent clumps from clogging up or snapping one of the plastic augur teeth...another $50 purchase to do this - (yes 'Everbilt 24 in. x 3/4 in. x 24 in. Plain Expanded Metal Sheet' is now $43). Tin snips worked well to cut this.- Triangular hitch plate upgrade: It seems with a lot of people whenever they fill the hopper with 50+ lbs and go over small bumps/ hills, the plates cannot handle the torsion load and start twisting due to being top heavy and causing the entire thing to fall over. (Hint for Chapin: Guess what, not everyone has a perfectly level lawn with zero bumps or hills. And if the recommended speed is 6 mph as you mentioned in an answered question, then those torsion loads are going to be much higher when on a hill or hitting a bump.) So the hitch plates really need to be beefed up as the point right at the hitch pin is going to be the weakest link.I bought a 1/4" thick 12x12 mild steel plate (item B07MC8K235) and will need to cut/ drill to the original design. With this thicker material, I will need to also buy another set of bolts and lock nuts but not a huge deal. This will be more than enough to prevent any sort of twisting on my steep hills. Update: Did this project and it was quite involved. Needed to purchase a Diablo Steel Demon blade for my circular saw as the material was just too thick for an angle grinder. The blade made relatively quick work out of cutting the 1/4" thick steel although made a HUGE mess with all the metal shavings. I bought and used 1/4" bolts & lock nuts in place of the metric ones that come with the unit, drill bit/ step bit + 3 in 1 oil worked good to get these holes drilled. Everything came together nicely in the end.- Check Tire psi: other's have said there was as little as 2 psi in the tires where it was rated at 20 psi. Mine were between 10-15 psi.It is crazy all of this needs to be done to get it up to par. It really does appear the ones designing this have zero clue about usability on anything other than absolutely ideal conditions. Even just putting in a simple screen instead of the cover would be a nice upgrade.Will post updates along with pictures once I do all of the above as well as actually start to use it.Update: Used it for the first time to spread grub control on the grass before the rain storm. Worked very well so far. It definitely wanted to tip and most certainly would have if not for the upgraded hitch plates I installed. With them installed it gave so much more stability, zero indication at the plate hole itself of any torsion issue. Happy with it so far, hope it lasts!Update 2: Spread granular lime, seed and fertilizer. Here's my take on each:Lime: Needed a LOT of lime to raise pH - ran it with the hopper wide open. This spread very well and glad I had this tow behind instead of walk as I needed to make multiple passes even with it wipe open.Seed: Seed is very smooth and 'slippery' in that it will continue to come out of the hopper even if you stop moving. So you really need to plan your route accordingly because of this.Fertilizer: The hopper is set on about 4-5 for fert and it did get hung up every so often; the fert would not come out so I had to jump off and shake it around until it started coming out again. Since fert is course, it will generally not come out of the hopper when stopped.For all 3 I do agree with others in that the tires get in the way of the throw path; bad product design. They're too high/ the spreader plate that spins is too low. So a lot of the product ends up hitting the tires instead of flying off to its intended destination. To combat this, you really need to be going full speed which is difficult to do when going around edges and shrubs. What I do is just use this spreader for the bulk of the yard wide open spaces and then for the side/ smaller yard I use my smaller Scotts spreader which has more control.

Replaced an AgriFab spreader that I've been using for 25 years and that I finally just wore out. This one seems to work well for my 1-1/2 acre yard. Only used it once so far, so time will tell how well it holds up. I like that the drive mechanism is enclosed and has a grease fitting. I opted for the Chapin brand rather than the really cheap ones as I have other Chapin products that hold up well.