Hey everyone Recently purchased a Bobcat 863, I believe it is F series based on some inquiries with customer service. Engine runs great, just changed oil, and both fuel/oil filters. Bought it with a basically full hydraulic tank but noticed some small leaks. Within a few days of bringing it home it's basically gone below the low line on the dip stick. Looks like I have a metal line running to driver-side lift cylinder leaking at coupler, along with what I assume are lift lines running to the control valve under the cab. Also, see what appears to be weeping on aux lines. And weeping on line running behind the air filter up into the lift arm (I assume lift cylinder lines?) My game plan is to obviously clean up the lines with a washer/purple power. Then cap the aux lines at the control valve since I have no use for them with the attachments I intend to use. I've gotten advice to just replace O rings on most of these lines, but how feasible is that on these solid metal lines running to control valve? Would I be better off removing them and having new lines made? This thing is obviously aged, I feel like I'm risking more damage totally removing lines to replace. I've got some major jobs in the next two weeks and if I could get this thing running with minimized leaks that'd really save my back lol. Worst case I'm going to top her off and run her to atleast make it through the jobs then get back into fixing. Theres just no telling how fast it'll dump this fluid out. Thanks for any input!
Here are a couple more pictures for context.
If it was mine, I'd clean it up first and see if you can find where the leak(s) is. If it is just a bunch of fittings that are weeping, I'd run it till I had time to fix it. You might already know this, but on my bobcat, there is no "drain pan" that you can drop to clean out all the junk at the bottom, just some small drain holes near the back. You can wash everything to the front and then pull it out by hand or a shop vac. I'd also spend the time to get the aux hydraulics working, a grapple on a skid steer is a wonderful invention.