I am planning to go into equipment lease in a verry small way due to finance constraint. I have identified a numder of candidates to buy for my budget of $20000. Only these monsters with buckets ranging from 4 to 6 cubic yards are in great demand in my area hence my focas on these class. I have little experience in this area, but I have been involved in fleet maintenance for several years and I hold a first degree in Mech. engineering. I solicite for advice from your vast experience in both operating and maintaining these machines. Regards Abba
mate if you only have a little money like 20,000USD i would not suggest look at this at all. you need to look at what if the machine has a major break down a complete engine failure? what do you do then? 1960-1970 too old save up more money get newer machinery.
In their day they were good machines. You can buy a 988 for cheap, but if the engine fails, it may be 20 to $30,000 to rebuild properly. The pins and bushings are usually worn, and to rebush the front end can run 10 to 20 thousand. Hydraulic pump is around $4,000. The list goes on. It is hard to run one on a shoestring budget, and even worse without having any prior experience. Even with a great deal of experience, you would be asking for trouble by having no repair reserves.Who would work on the machine? The last time I used my 87A, it needed a mechanic for about 4 hrs for every 8 it worked. It might have a good run for a week or 2, but things would fall apart. I had the fan hub fail 3 times on aone job. The original, a good used, and a Cat reman all failed. The second Cat reman lasted. Fan blades have been thrown off of the fan due to metal fatigue. D rings would fail on average of one per day when trying to use it for production loading work. Because of the age and problems, things do not line up right anymore, so vibration causes hard lines to crack and wear through. Blew a front diff once, that was $15,000. Had the torque converter out at least 3 times. That ran $8,000 to $12,000 each time. Had the hydraulic tank split apart and rebuilt all the valves inside. In a month it was as bad as before. It was a continual money pit. When used only sparingly as a back up it was handy, but even then it needed many repairs. These vintage machines are OK, untill they get pushed to work, then break out the checkbook.
@JDOFMEMI thanks for the canandid advice, can you suggest one that has a low maintenance cost. I have abot three 20 tonnes dump truck running, I believe the budget for maintenance can be funded from there. I have seen a couple of old 60's and 70's cat 966 and 950 operating in my area. Are these too same with 988? thanks abba
We have older 988, 980 and 966 running in Nigeria. You can be sure that its much more expensive to run a machine like that than to run a 20-ton-dump-truck. And ours were far more expensive than 20.000 $. I wouldnt think thats a good idea.
abba mate hounestly i would just give up on the idea until you have a few more dollars saved up i would actually buy a cheaper new chinese wheel loader then look at a very old CAT i know your contry has a lot of chinese machines there and i have never seen a 988 or 980 cat worth less then 30,000USD anywhere so i would go away from that idea.
But most people down there are not talking good about their chinese machines.
Abba our company export machines to all over the world and we ship to nigeria semi trucks and equipment and i can get you a machine with this price and we can give you a price delivered to nigeria or FOB loaded in container, if you interested call alex Thanks
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