Hi all, new member here. I have a 763 bobcat, not the biggest machine in the shed for sure but she does what I need to get done. My 763 was first owned by a company that did mostly backhoe work with it so it has the "ears" for mounting a backhoe to and it was operated by the same 2 men while they had it. I bought it from South Coast bobcat in Orange County, So, Cal. It had been gone through and was in very good shape. It has a total of around 2400 hours on it now and it still runs like a dream. I was given a Clark 910 backhoe attachment with 4 buckets , free for the hauling along with an auger (with 3 drills 8", 16" and 24" I think) and a trencher. They were sold to the man I got them from as a package deal when he bought his bobcat from a business that quit a few years ago, but he never uses the attachments and just wanted them gone. They all need minor work (some hoses and new hyd flat face fittings at least) and to be altered to fit the new bobtatch plates but it isn't anything a cutting torch and a welder can't take care of in short order. Anyway, the backhoe attachment only needs 3 or 4 hoses replaced as far as I can tell plus I need to modify the mounting plate (once I torch it off the other bobcat) to fit the new mounting system and a new seat, but after, what, 20+ years it is about due for a new seat anyway huh? The cylinders look good and there are no apparent leaks with the seals (no oily dirt residue around the business end of the cylinders) and the chrome is like new on all but the main dipper rod, it has some rust pits but nothing that can't be polished out before operation to avoid tearing the seals. I know there are better digging machines in the world but this would be another arrow in my quiver of tools. It looks like my "day job" as an aircraft tooling inspector will only last for another year or so (2.4 more and I can retire early!) I am hoping that with my bobcat (that I have operated on my own property and light work for others for 6 years) I think I can add some income to the household and get by as we are still fairly out in the country so to speak. So what do you think, should I try to get the backhoe attachment running or should I just scrap it and rent a mini ex when needing to dig? I only plan to do small jobs anyway, such as septic tanks and light grade work. We live in hill country so nearly everyone has some hill work to do to get a flat piece of land. The property sizes range from 1 to 5 acres with most being below 1.5
Go for it!! What do you have to lose?:drinkup
I would get it up and running and if you need extra dig depth then rent a mini. Don't sell that auger short as there is a lot you can do with them. Good luck!
you should def. keep it. it will cost you more money in the long run to rent out a mini ex. and like bill said rent the mini only if you need it. the bills stack up pretty quick. but good luck
A auger was the first attachment I bought to add to the package I picked up with my first loader. That package included a hoe, brusher, forks, bucket. I had alot of request for a auger to for deck installation, fences, trees, pole buildings and so forth. I'd be lost without the hoe, sure a mini ex would be better most of the time but more cost, maintenance, big load to move mini ex and skidsteer with a 1 ton. They will pull a 36" boulder out of the ground and make short work (5 to 10 mins) of stumps up to 12" I dug out a 36" stump once, took 2 hours, root ball was 7 ft wide the closest I could rip them off. Had to pull it from the hole with a skidder, as it was as big as my 753, when we got it out. But the skidder could not have pulled it without digging the roots off either. If your excavating virgin material it is as fast to lossen things with the hoe, especially if you have stones or stumps to deal with, then clean with the loader bucket. I have since picked up a trencher for drain tiles, wire and shallow water trenching (won't go below the frost line here) and makes way less mess when you don't need a wide trench. The attachments make the machine, I renting nearby was a option that would be great to for items you don't use much, but there is not much available here. Ken
Thanks for the feedback guys. I have been reading a lot on this board (not just the compact equipment forum) and the general tone of what I have read was that the BH attachment was really too small to do anything and you are money ahead by getting a used EX. It is good to hear that there is indeed work to do with the attachment. As has been said, it was free so just how much is there to loose? The biggest hurtle to overcome is to make the mount. The old mount is bolted and welded to the old bobcat but it's owner was willing to let me take it off his machine. It will not work on my machine as the configuration is different and there is no clearance on the old style mount plate for the arrangement of the cylinders on my machine so I need to modify the plate to fit on the bobtatch and make "hooks" to fit over the ears of the backhoe mounts that are on my machine. I have been looking at how the new system works and there seems to be a lock cam to hold the backhoe to the mount ears on the machine. This seems like it would make a much more solid mount than by using the loader arms / bobtatch only. You guys mentioned how handy the auger is, I never really thought about all the "hole" jobs out there but it does seem that there are quite a few different types of them for sure. Over the years I have added a few other attachments so when I get the new ones modified to fit and up and running, I will have: Backhoe attachment w/4 buckets Trencher 24" deep Auger and 3 bits and 4' extension Rock rake (open frame "bucket" made from bars spaced about 3" apart) with grapple Land plane (bobcat) with rippers Smooth edge bucket and a trailer hitch made to fit it for moving trailers in yard Toothed bucket (first attachment and it came with bobcat) Pallet forks I also see the wisdom in the comment about using the backhoe to loosen up the soil and then use the bucket to move the dirt. I bought the bobcat to make a pad on my property for my shop building 30' x 75' and I need to cut a pad about 50' x 100' for it to sit on. We live in the hills and I needed to cut most of the pad out of the side of a hill, about 4' at the deepest but there was about 20% of the pad that need to get filled and by the time I added the fill, it was nearly 15' deep at the outside edge. The side of the hill fell away rather quickly after the nearly "flat" section near the top and house (the house is why I could not move the pad to all cut). Our soil is DG, (decomposed granite) and it is virgin so it was nearly like cutting rock alone. I would tip the points of the bucket down and lift the front wheels off the ground then make a run down the cut. After about 2 or 3 passes like this, I would have a set of grooves in the "dirt" just about the depth of the teeth in the bucket. I then could go at an angle to the grooves and break them up, thus loosing the soil. It took WAY TOO LONG to cut the pad, something like 40 or 50 hours of work! Then there were the "rocks" to deal with. Most were smaller than a basket ball, some were 2 or 3 feet across (too heavy to pick up but I skidded them with the bucket) and then there were the 2 large ones. One was about 8 feet long 3 feet wide and I don't know how tall as I just used a rented impact breaker to take the top off and the bottom of it is still there. Heck it could have been bedrock for all I know! There was the top of a second rock that quickly grew in size but fortunately I only need to cut a divot out of it for the foundation to sit on, 6" of concrete now covers the remains of both rocks. If I had the digging force of a backhoe, I likely would have been able to loosen things up quite a bit before moving the dirt and save some time.
I would hang on to all those attatchments, you got a great setup. I really dont like renting attatchments that have to hook up to the hydralic system because it can contaminate your system. You dont know what type of fluid the other people that rent them use in their machines and you end up circulating what ever oil is left in the attatchment through your system. Just my opinion, maybe one of the mechanices on here know otherwise. Good luck with your new venture.