im Looking to buy a 2011 cat 432 It has 3400 hours. Good condition. Maintenance every 500 hours. No leaks. Is that a lot of hours for a 12 year old machine? Thank you for your help
I don't think that's excessive. Can you post some pics of it?
A backhoe needs grease every joint, every 10 hours use. I believe it should get grease also if it has been rained on. Hours are a factor, maintenance an even bigger factor. Grease it yourself before buying, any fittings that won't accept grease have been neglected. I'm educating myself the hard way. I've bought 5 backhoes in 23 years. First was a 26 year old John Deere 410. 2000 hours, looked pristine. Original paint, no evidence of any repairs ever, no welds, tight joints, ran well. The drive it ten miles home was a fail. Leaked so badly from a mysterious source, I had to add 10 gallons of hydraulic oil to get home. It proved to be a cracked hose fitting WAY up under the operator's seat. Nicest machine you could use first hour, then it couldn't lift an empty bucket. Months of trying unsuccessfully to find a mechanic qualified to diagnose the problem, I talked to someone halfway across the country. He said: "You've got oil flowing where it shouldn't. Start it cold, use an infrared camera to see what warms first. It proved to be the backhoe control valve, defective since new. John Deere didn't offer parts, so a whole valve was about what I paid for the tractor. Finding & receiving the correct parts took forever, & adapting the tractor to fit the new valve wasn't simple. Meanwhile, I bought my first sloppy hoe. 5000 hours & if it had ever been greased it wasn't often! My son & I replaced most pins & bushings in the hoe & four in the front bucket. That job is not for the faint of heart, & cost of these parts is huge. I had an opportunity to buy a well cared for low hour Case close serial number to the sloppy one. It had three lever, foot swing backhoe I hated! Switched the hoes & control tower to the extend a hoe & joystick controls, Big job! A friend wanted out on a JD 410C. Tractor looked good, but again the function of the hoe was intermittent. Proved to be a port relief valve in the boom section. Would be a 1/2 hour replacement but NLA from John Deere. That tractor ultimately needed lots of new pins & bushings. Several joints had to be disassembled to remove dry hard grease before they would take grease. Present Case hoe is very tight, but has been an electronic nightmare. Electrical & sealed electronic boxes are a total mystery. Even the dealer has failed to diagnose a number of problems. The moral of my lengthy story is old hoes are challenging. Don't buy expecting to use one trouble free.
Good advice. Thank you for taking the time to write it out for me.
The number of hours actually seems quite low if the machine was working on a 40-hour Monday-Friday schedule. It only equates to about 1 hour/day on average. "Maintenance every 500 hours" only means someone threw filters & oil at it. The $64k question is did anyone actually "maintain it".? It looks pretty clean, especially inside the cab. What does the operator seat look like under that seat cover.? That can tell you a lot about how much it's been used.
That baby is KLEEN.!! & nice new shoes ta boot..
Looks nice, but see no evidence of grease on visible zerks; maybe just cleaned really well? Our machines always look a little messy/greasy around zerks and linkages. I like to see a clean interior also, often seems to reflect a well looked after machine. Regarding Willie B’s comments on checking grease zerks to make sure they actually take grease I heartily agree…. We owned a Hitachi Ex270 road builder and had to fight out bucket linkage pins; not a fun project! The main bucket pin was actually squeaking when we took ownership!
Well, since the invention of the cordless grease gun, sales on tubes of grease have mysteriously exploded. lol