I bought a 2002 Bobcat 331 with 5300 hours a few years ago, first time owning or operating an excavator of any size. I rebuilt the pivots for the bucket; don't think they maintained it very well - one final drive was nearly empty. Sigh. The boom lift function has always been very touchy, have to really ease into the joystick to get it to lift with some precision. Have mostly used the machine for digging out stumps and similar jobs so a touchy boom wasn't terrible. I've got some jobs coming up where a more smooth control would really be helpful. I've tried to get my technique better by scraping the top few inches of gravel in the area of a pothole but the jumpy boom makes it difficult. I lowered the pilot pressure and it may have helped a little but all of the other functions now are less powerful. Wondering if there is a root cause for this behavior or if this is normal for these machines and it's my technique that needs practice. I'm considering adding a restrictor in the pilot pressure path to the main valve. Any advice on if this will help? Tim
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