Im doing some research on John Deere graders. Looking at a older 670A or 670b. I see the controls are different. How reliable were they. I know cat is the standard. I just can't afford them. Looking at Deere, champion, or a Komatsu, Gallion. Older Deere seems to be what I'm after. Mainly because my single drop low bed can haul it. Cab height of 10 feet. And they seem to be under 30000 dollars. I'm just looking to fix my roads and work for neighbors alittle. Not like I'm working it every day. Front scarifiers might be a good way to go. Makeshift blade to go in riper pockets to knock rock slides off road and fill in washouts that I can't get over. I want to be able to slope banks, so it needs a saddle. Don't want to climb up the bank to do it. It needs good brakes and articulate. Want to be safe in steep country. Also want a cab. I'll put a red dot on it. Not trying to fix 30 year old ac. Gona fix it up. Just don't want to buy something that sucked even when it was new.
We had a jd 670a we purchased from the military surplus. We got lucky and got it at a blind scrap auction for 2500 dollars. It had under 1000hrs and just broken hoses and exhaust from being moved. We put a ton of hours on it maintaining a 50 mile subdivision. It was extreemly fuel efficient but had tons of power and just the right about of weight to cut harder roads. We sold that machine and kept our 570a. The 570 is a great little machine nothing like driving the 670. Way easier to operate. Shorter but can still hold a good grade, itdosent have the weigt to cut hard roads so you have to rely on the scarifire. That one has 5k hours and we just did the injection pump and it's looking like it needs a head gasket soon. For the price ans availability of parts they are good machines. The county here runs jd graders because the cost is much lower then a cat. One frustrating side of them is the blade dosent lift all that high so you can get hung up on certain trailers.
Thanks for the info Gary. Did John Deere brakes seem to be ok.
The brakes are internal wet disc brakes. They can't stop on a dime and hold on steep grades. We changed our filters often if we did alot of heavy breaking. The only thing I've heard is the clutch discs in the trans start going bad after awhile. They are getting up there with age. AND the controls are a bit different but once you get the hang of it it becomes second nature.
the early models had a problem with sealing rings on the rotating clutches as a maintenance item we would check certain clutch pressures and if they started to drop off we would remove and reseal to prevent failure (clutch C3 I think a long time ago) mark