I've noticed that quite a lot of you guys post with technical and troubleshooting questions for your machines, and I wondered if we could get some sort of overview of which ones are the most/least reliable. For example, I've noticed that Bobcat problems are well represented on the skid steer forum. On the backhoe forum, there seems to be a lot of Case related questions. Is this because they are less reliable, or because there are more of them out there? If we can get enough opinions together on backhoes, loaders, trucks, excavators and all the rest, we may be able to give an informed view of which manufacturer to avoid for each particular type of machine. I'm talking pure reliability here. Opinions on which is better to operate, price, who has the best after-sales service etc, although equally valid considerations when making a purchase, would muddy the waters on this one.
You may see a large number of questions about a certain brand of equipment on a forum. It then looks like they are all the worst pieces of equipment in the world by forum post. You then have to consider how many are really out there. If X brand sells 30,000 pieces a year and Y brand sells 5,000 pieces you will probably see more post of breakdowns on X brand. Same thing happens on car forums. May be we need JD Power for heavy equipment. Hard to judge by a post count.
Something to consider is that the folks who are coming here for repair advice might be those who's best first option is not to call up the dealer and get the machine back up and running in a hurry. If your main money maker breaks down, chances are you aren't going to be able to wait for the free advice you can get here, you're going to call somebody who can have it back up and running tomorrow. Maybe there are more of them out there because they're more reliable? You're right about Case, for instance--We seem to field a lot of 580C questions, for example, but that's a machine that's in the neighborhood of 30 years old. Chances are small that that's the first line machine for anybody that's making their living with a backhoe. The large number of questions might be explained by the fact that there were quite a few produced, and now quite a few have found their way into the hands of the kind of people who have the time and wherewithal to fix them themsleves, and that they're basic enough that guys can fix them themselves. This is a good topic to discuss, but I think there are a lot of variables to consider, and no conclusions should be jumped to.
As well as forum members asking technical questions, all you operators working 10 hour shifts on front line machines should have a good opinion....
My Komatsu PC200 is a very reliable machine, I have had really good luck with my Bobcat equipment as well, I've never had a bad cat dozer either.
Agreed, digger242j, Here's one instance of how this Forum saved me some time, and possibly a bunch of manual reading, plus trial and error. In my case, it was too late to call the dealer, but that's not relevant, because I wouldn't have anyway, and I wasn't in a big hurry. What is relevant though, is the fact that I didn't want to spend all the next day messing around, trouble shooting down blind alleys. And this was more or less the key that got things off on the right path. That was almost exactly a year ago!! lol OCR