We were thinking about buying another piece of equipment. Not sure if we sould get another ADT or a dozer. A guy in our area has a d5m for sale. has about 10,000 hours a cab but we have not gone to see it yet. my question is what are the down sides of this machine if any. This machine will replace a JD 750 with a 4 way blade the cat has a six way. also the asking price is 35,000. I'm not a cat man we run almost all john deere so any help or advice would be welcome. thanks.
My advice would be to stick with the 750. The D5m will never push what the 750 will. It would be more in line with a 650 size machine. i did a demo on a new one a while back. It seemed like more of a finish dozer to me.
The six way blade can be a problem if you do a lot of rough dozing with the corners. You have a hydraulic ram in place of the draft arms so if you do a lot of pushing with the corners, the ram takes the abuse. But it is more versatile with getting into tight places and making angle dozing like a blade. I used mine to do a lot of slope work but when it involved backing down the slope in reverse through the transmission to get another push, on hot days it would send the temperature way to the hot side. The electronics only gave me minor headaches. Check the dozer in the "triple tree" area to make sure the 6 way isn't too sloppy. That is a big expense to replace that giant middle bearing. The cab center window is almost useless with the exhuast stack and pre-cleaner blocking out a lot of the view but you get used to that. Cat is a reliable rig but anything that has been abused is going to have problems. XL is better for sticking it in the ground but it won't out push a JD 750. Look at the specs. But IMHO, I would rather have that for almost any dozer work than a 650, except for hanging on a steep side-hill. Have a good holiday season and give yourself the gift that keeps on giving (and taking). Some self-propelled iron. Hope this helps.
Herky jerky steering if it's finger paddle steer, finish dozer I would say, marginal for ripping hard ground
Just gotta get a feel for it. I also know there are a few mechanics that can adjust that herky steering and make it a lot smoother.
Thanks for the info. We really don't need a 750 size dozer for what we do. Also a 6 way blade would be a lot better for grading then the 4-way. It does have the finger controls, never run one myself but I have run a few othe hand controll steering machines. Found if you give it a honest try you can figure it out. Now other then the over-heating the tranny anything else to watch for? We are going to look at it tomorrow. Our mechanic has a computer program that he can plug into the machines cpu and give use a inside view.