We've been thiniking about buying this machine and since lots of you like pictures, well here they are. I had pics earlier but my smart phone is smart than I and deleted them..:Banghead. Did not want to hijack Boones thread so thoguht I would just start a new one. We too have been looking for a good/used loader for our farm, as many on here have all so. They do seem to be hard to find, at least in decent condition, and not cost you a small fortune....Have talked to Boone a couple times on /through the forumn and would like to thank him for his input/imformation regarding the purchase of a decent/used machine. Was able to go back and take a closer look at yesterday. The rollers seem to be very worn(not surprising it is 78) everything else doesn't seem to be in to bad of shape. Our grease serts actually have grease in them. Happy Easter..
more pics Feel free to comment, let us know if you see something that we should be concerned with.
last but not least. Thanks for looking. Hopefully everything will work out with this but if not, there's always more "machines" in the sea.
Boy that looks familiar! Good job on the pics. Doesn't look like a bad machine. Don't see any major dents and dings. Looks like it's been used but taken care of. I'm surprised he doesn't have locks on his fuel and oil caps. Looks like it may be missing a side shield on the engine. The earlier machines had a nice feature that I wished they'd kept all along and that is the swing out grill. The bucket, teeth and shanks look like they're good shape. The teeth are all there. Would be interesting to see the underside of the bucket and pins. Ours are pretty worn. That's something we didn't check and our bucket has a some slop in it. The chord rings on our loader arms were gone and that caused a bit of play in the arms till we installed them. They're available if that machine is missing them. That undercarriage looks more like 40% (but I'm not expert on that). The carrier rollers look pretty worn...about like ours. The sprockets look a bit more worn. I have pictures of ours on pg 3 of my thread. The rails (chains) on that machine look better than ours. I also notice that machine doesn't have rock gaurds. That's probably not a big deal. Seems some people prefer not to have them. If you get serious about the machine, check the cylinder rods for scuffs or anything that can tear the seals. Also take some tools and lift the floor boards by the brake pedal and look for bad wiring or worn battery cables. Check the linkages and any leaks on the top side of the transmission. Check for any leaks as much as possible on the bottom. There should be a valve under the fuel tank you can check for what's in the bottom of the tank. If you take qrt oil container and cut the bottom out of it and use it as a tray, you can slip it in through the opening on the back to take a quick sample of the fuel. Guess you could take an oil sample too. Looks like it's got some life left in it to me.
Pretty serious rip on the left armrest. Looks like it might get worse over time. LOL Sorry I couldnt resist. What do you plan to use the machine for? Pushing poop or clearing trees and moving virgin dirt? How many hours do you plan on putting on it?
Hardline, I to was worried about the armrest . If that was the only thing that was possibly wrong with it, it probally wouldn't still be sitting there. . We plan on clearing quite a bit of brush, cedars, honey locust, oaks, and a few cottonwood. Need to build at least two if not three crossing.... smooth out a pond that has had the bank cut to drain it. Have quite a bit of things to do with, but this is things to start with. It sounds worse than what it is, and the whole point to this is so we can reclaim the land so it is farmable.. Butg for now we are just looking at it, I have talked to the local Kumatsu dealer and they have actually sold parts to the owner for it. He gave me a pretty good indication of what he thought it was worth. So it maybe sitting there a while longer...
LOL! Good catch Hardline. That will definitely get worse over time.