Buying a Skid loader? WATCH THIS FIRST!

[Applause] hey guys how's it going welcome back to diesel creek today we're going to be talking about the most versatile piece of equipment in my arsenal and one that i personally couldn't live without and if i had to have just one piece of equipment this would definitely have to be it i'm talking about of course a skid loader during the course of this video you might hear me refer to the skid loader as a bobcat but that's just like a kleenex tissue thing for me this is a bobcat brand machine i do not necessarily say that bobcats are the best they have their issues but all manufacturers do so we're going to leave brand loyalty out of this video or at least i'm going to attempt to and we're just going to talk about the pros and cons of different setups of equipment and what you should be looking for if you're going to go out and buy a machine and i highly recommend you do it's been a couple weeks since i've last run this machine and the alternator wasn't charging the last time i was running it and i think the battery was getting low so uh fingers crossed that it actually starts right now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so in case anybody's interested this tractor that i just unloaded off my trailer here or what's left of this tractor this is the farm all a that my buddy picked up at the beginning of the year i did a quick little video on it and uh once we got into it you know we quick really quickly yeah quickly realized that uh this thing's really just too far gone it's not even not even that great of a parts tractor honestly the radiator is probably the only great thing on it it's got one good tire a set of wheel weights and a rear lift that are you know worth what he paid for it but the block i've never seen a block that bad the camshafts completely pitted over so is the crank it's just a nightmare but anyway on to the topic of this video so back onto the focal point of this video um whatever you want to call this piece of machinery people call them bobcats skid loaders skid steers ctls or compact track loaders uh they have a variety of different names probably a lot that i'm not even knowing because i'm just from pennsylvania you know i know there's a lot of guys watch this channel that are from all over the world and they call them different things in different places okay so if you're in the market for one of these machines there are several different setups that you could buy and you know they all come with their own set of issues really not too much variation between the whole bunch of them but you know you're going to want to get the right machine for what you're doing with it so the big difference in between a skid steer skid loader or a ctl compact track loader is rubber tires versus rubber tracks now we're not going to get into it but you can also take off these tires and bolt a track system on that's aftermarket that's a whole different video um but this machine came from the factory with rubber tires this is a bobcat s185 and in the bobcat series uh they don't have a track machine and this same size would be a t190 don't ask me why all their numbers are the way they are but about the same size machine as a t-190 in a bobcat but it would come with the factory rubber tracks on it so the difference between rubber tires and tracks is massive okay if you're doing a lot of grading work or moving dirt or spreading stone anything like that where you need that stability to be able to cut a nice grade and keep things smooth rubber tracks are a huge advantage compared to rubber tires now that being said track machines are considerably more money compared to a rubber tire machine like this so you got to really weigh that out do you have to have rubber tracks no before rubber tracks got popular everybody did everything with these machines you know maybe a little slower takes a little longer a little more finesse a little more skill but you can do it everybody asks me about these steel tracks now these ones are made by grouser brand and these obviously just go over the rubber tires and they are fantastic they're a little noisy everybody complains in the videos that these tracks are noisy and they need oil unfortunately there's no way to really lubricate these they're an open bushing so if you put any oil in them the dirt just wipes it right out of there almost instantly so these are a tremendous upgrade when doing dirt work or working on slopes or in really soft ground tremendous upgrade over rubber tires uh even just on like muddy ground right here the rubber tires will start spinning and make a mess and it's just these these tracks really are a game changer so that's one option you can look at if you don't want to spend the coin to get a dedicated rubber track machine uh i picked this setup used off a facebook marketplace for i think 800 or a thousand dollars and they still have paint on the side so they were like new so there's your undercarriage differences now the other big difference in machines is this setup back here this area of the machine is your boom so this arm goes up and down this is a vertical lift style of machine so as you can see the arm comes back here and goes into this linkage and when this cylinder goes up this linkage actually moves back which keeps the bucket when you lift the bucket on this machine it stays in the exact same plane it doesn't go out further or come in closer to the machine as you lift up and down the other type of machine has a little bit different setup back here and that's called a radio lift machine this arm would run straight back into one pivot right about here and it would just hinge so when you have a fixed boom point like that that hinges now you have the bucket makes a radius and it will actually go further and closer to the machine throughout the radius of lift i hope that makes sense it's the best way i can illustrate it now i am partial to the vertical lift because i think it just takes some of the brain work out of doing certain things uh you don't have to think about okay by the time i lift up four foot i'm gonna be six inches closer to whatever i'm you know loading into or setting something on or whatever like that it just takes some of your brain out of it but it does become second nature after you run one for so long i think you get a little bit more lift height out of these style machines but don't quote me on that the disadvantage to one of these styles of machines is you have more pivot points now so instead of coming back here to one pivot point now you've got two on each side that you wouldn't have with a regular style of machine so if you're looking at one of these do cosmetics matter this rust down here does that really matter not really it's really personal preference but however somebody maintains their machine can tell you a lot about how they maintain the mechanics of it too now in my case i don't worry about cosmetics i keep the machine mechanically sound when things break i i fix them as fast as possible the paint unfortunately i don't make as much time for this heaviest steel is not going to rust away like it would if this was your car and this was bare metal you know your car is going to rot away within a couple years at least in this part of the country but heavy steel like this with no paint on it it's not going to go anywhere for quite a long time so i guess we'll just start here at the front of the machine and go all the way around things that i would look at when i show up to look at a machine so right here this is your quick attach plate this is independent from this this plate sets inside of this channel here and engages with these levers now these levers often on a lot of neglected machines are pretty well seized up these ones here as you can see move really easy now what that does is that pulls that pin right there out of the attachment plate so if those don't move very easily they probably don't switch attachments very often with their machine and they can be a pain to get freed up and moving again but most of the time you can get them loosened back up and cleaned up and working correctly so this is what they call a manual style quick coupler or quick attach whatever you want to call it some machines instead of having these manual handles like i have will have either an electric linear actuator in this area or a hydraulic cylinder that you can just push a button from in the cab and it will open those pins up and you can drop off your attachment and switch to something else also on the front of the machine here this is where most of the motion happens on a machine your boom goes up and down sure and that that moves a lot but your bucket moving back and forth that's a bit more movement that these pins and bushings receive a good bit more movement than the ones at the back of the loader arm so you're going to want to check the pins and bushings especially down here where they attach to the loader arm these things you got to grease them constantly and they will start to get slop in them so here's a better view of these pins and bushings you can kind of see mine are starting to get a little bit of wear in them right here this pin looks like it's rocking around inside of this plate and it's not supposed to move there so if this part of the plate gets sloppy you really can't even factory put a bushing in that that's a not supposed to wear at all so what that's doing is just hammering over time that's hammering out the metal in this fit and causing some slop there so the only way to really fix that would be to either a buy a new plate a new quick attach plate from the manufacturer which would be outrageously expensive or take this to a machine shop and have them weld the bore up and drill it back out for you same goes for this fit down here which is the one that really receives the most abuse in my opinion uh these ones i have put new pins and bushings in within the last 6 800 hours and already they're starting to get a little bit of slop in them and i do grease them religiously uh they are due for it right now but i promise i do grease them now it really pays off to take a buddy with you or something when you go to look at a machine like this because you could be running the machine or your buddy can be running the machine and one of you can be outside the machine watching all the pivots for slop now there's a lot of things moving right now but what we're looking at is right where this quick attach plate attaches to the loader arm that has a little bit of up and down movement in it now that means that we're getting some wear in there but it's not super bad just yet how big a deal is it if those bushings are worn out well that just depends on your level of mechanical ability or what you're paying for the machine if it's worth it to send it to the shop and get those bushings replaced or you do it yourself parts for something like that typically aren't too expensive because it's a common wear item and there's really just not much to them i guess the next thing we'll do is go into the cab here now there's a few different configurations of controls in a machine like this mine is the one that i prefer but we'll talk about the rest of them here obviously when looking at a piece of equipment if the inside of the cab is just really torn up or all rusted out or filled with junk you know that to me that says something about the way that machine was maintained this one here spent a good majority of its life outside before i owned it and even after i owned it it's spent a lot of time outside i only recently have gotten a building for it to live in now um so consequently it is a little a little messed up it's very dirty at the moment this poor thing doesn't need a bath terrible you can see some of the fabric in the back of the cab here is peeled up i guess just from the moisture getting to it nothing super critical though i did just replace the bottom seat cushion as some of you may have seen so the seats are tore up those are not a cheap thing to replace so if you're going to be spending a lot of time in one of these machines you want to make sure you got some place comfortable to sit so the a tore up seat really does count for something in my book now that we're inside the machine here we're going to talk about creature comforts so as i just said you want to make sure you have a comfortable place to sit now newer modern machines a lot of them have heat ac radio all the the whole thing just like your car does this machine while it has a thermostat over here it doesn't move it's always on hot and there's no ac in this machine it has a variable speed for the fan and that's all i got so in the winter time the machine's great but in the summer time even with the fan off it's still pretty warm in here and that's with no front door and the windows open in a bobcat and most other brand of machines there's different configurations you can get for your instrument clusters the newer the machine the more advanced they're going to be this one here is uh pretty much as advanced as you could get for the time this is a 2003 model and this has keyless start so now that we're in the control panel we can see all of our gauges here and after we start the machine you know the oil pressure will come up the hydraulic temperature will come up and so on and so forth and there's a lot of cool tools that you can go through the menu here and use and you know so that counts for a good bit in my opinion the lower model the lower trim models of these machines just have a regular old ignition switch over here nothing fancy you're going to want to make sure all your gauges work obviously check out all that stuff the instrumentation make sure it works make sure your headlights work all that stuff counts for something the little things you're just going to want to check everything in the machine for functionality under the control systems now there's different names for the control systems people call them different things um i can i call this h pattern what i run um so basically you have a lever for each side of the machine so you push this one forward and backward it makes this side of the tires go forward or backward so when you push them both forward the whole machine goes forward if you push them both backwards the whole machine goes backwards if you push one forward and one backwards you're going to twist and do a 180. that's just your directional travel now with an h pattern you have this motion right here is what controls your tilt and this over here is what runs your boom so when you work those together i can be nice and smooth with my hands the other option that this machine has is foot controls so now i'm not going to touch anything but i can still run the boom and the forks using just my feet and now these where my hands are at simply do the directions forward and backward i don't like foot controls i'm not very smooth with them that's probably just because i've never spent enough time running them but my feet are kind of big to really fit down on the foot wells so i think that's also part of my problem so i will never buy a machine that has just foot controls i found some killer deals on nice machines that have foot controls and i still won't bring myself to buy them because i just don't feel that i'm comfortable running them now the third style of bucket controls that i don't have here to show you are called pilot controls or iso controls same thing you have two joysticks just like this but instead of having all this travel here for your forward and backwards you don't have any of that you have a joystick over here and a joystick over here this joystick on an iso machine will handle all your boom functions so this is your curl just like this one and then forward and backward is your boom up and down and this one over here handles all of your travel functions you know forward backward left and right now that is indeed the smoothest and probably the the most universal way to run a skid steer these days all modern machines on most construction sites uh have iso at least the ones i go to there are people that still run foot controls or h pattern like this but it's definitely becoming the norm to have iso controls the thing i do not like about iso controls are your directional travel the boom function and one controller is great i have no issues with that but having your left and right controls as well as forward and backward in one controls leaves you less control of your sides of the machine basically so with this style of control if i'm pushing this controller forward and that side starts to slip i can feel the resistance come off of this controller because you you have a little bit of resistance it's pushing back against you as you're pushing it forward but the moment that side starts to slip and lose traction i can feel that and i can compensate by pushing this one a little bit harder and usually get myself unstuck before i ever get stuck if that makes sense when you have an iso machine that you're just pushing this thing forward you don't have that fine finessing control you might notice that you're starting to slip and spin but there's really other than to just turn the opposite direction of the slippage you don't have a way to make that one side run faster than the other side all that being said i'd still rather have an iso machine than this when i buy a new machine it's going to be a track machine with iso controls now a lot of the modern machines also have a pattern changer in them just like this one does i can switch between the hand and the foot controls a lot of the new ones have the iso controls that you can also switch into the h pattern like i have here except for you don't have this big range of motion you just have the joysticks tilt forward and backwards and that does give you the independent control of your tracks like i'm talking about as we start to work around the machine here you're going to stop here at your auxiliary block now i i'm pretty sure all modern machines have auxiliary hydraulics they still list it in the machinery trader like it's some sort of option but i've never seen a machine that doesn't have some sort of auxiliaries now whether you have just two auxiliaries this one here has a third valve um and then a lot of machines will have even more than that and you know i have an electrical hook up here that it's missing too but there is an electrical coupler that plugged in here and you have servos on your attachments sometimes that will allow you to run more hydraulic functions without having all those extra plumbing out here so this machine is what they call a standard flow hydraulic pump as well some machines have a higher flow pump or even a secondary pump that will produce a much greater flow of hydraulic fluid for your attachments you're running all my attachments are standard flow so like that auger over there i think this machine runs between 17 and 20 gallons a minute of uh hydraulic flow for the attachments and that is more than capable of running like an auger or i have a brush cutter that's designed for standard flow i have a grapple over there standard flow no issues but if you get into something like a road milling head or a high flow brush cutter or a forestry mulch or something like that those all typically demand high flow hydraulics which um i don't know how many gallons they usually flow i think they're upwards of 40 to 50 gallons a minute so that's a quite a jump up over one of these machines but you can get this exact same model machine with high flows it's just an option so if you are buying a rubber tire machine obviously your treads on your tires matter these tires are not cheap they're not little car tires they're going to run you 200 a piece at least for good ones you want to make sure if you're buying tires for a skid loader you get ones with good heavy sidewalls because that's typically where you're going to blow them out at rocks and stuff get in here and slice up your sidewalls and then all sudden poof and if you get a flat tire on one of these things you're not going anywhere and if you are buying a machine like this that has tracks on it these over the tire tracks my personal preference here and you're welcome to argue with me in the comments is this style here there's a couple different manufacturers that make ones that look just like this these are cast steel and they have a hard link in here with a bronze bushing in between these two links here and they're adjustable so to tighten these tracks you just take that bolt out squeeze these together and put the bolt here in this next hole and that will tighten up the tracks a little bit but these style of over the tire tracks are the ones that go with they're nice and heavy which gives you more stability and counterweight and they wear like iron i mean i've run these things for a thousand hours on this machine and i really don't notice any wear to them at all the bushings might be starting to wear a little bit but it's not a big deal you can go re-bush and put new bolts and bushings in the whole track system for you know a couple hundred dollars and it'd be like new again i don't think you're really going to wear these out unless you're doing some crazy stuff but the other brands of these things are fabricated so what that means is somebody in a factory somewhere puts pieces of cut steel regular well i don't know if it's mild steel or if it is some sort of anti-wear steel but they put it in a jig and they weld it together and i've seen a lot of those wear out really quickly and they get bent up and broken and i don't i think you see them also wearing out tires the people i bought this machine off of i used to work for and they had those style of tracks on these machines and they did not like those tracks at all they threw them away and they said they were just eating tires when they were running those style of tracks so me personally i'll stay away from them but i've had nothing but good luck with these tracks as you're coming around the machine you're going to be looking at all your hydraulic lines over here so like this guy here see how it's wiggling around right there that used to have a piece of plastic that held it just like this guy but obviously it caught on something or just got brittle and broke from age and it looks like i need to pick up one of those things and that's a simple repair all you do is zap this thing off of here put the new plastic retainer on there and screw it back on but stuff like that that matters because uh that flopping around like that for a long time will eventually wear through one of these lines where it's rubbing here and these hard lines are quite expensive you're going to want to be checking all your fittings as you're coming around here making sure all these uh pivots have been greased recently if you see one that's real dry and doesn't look like it's had grease in forever probably a good chance that they haven't greased it probably a good chance that it's wore out because it hasn't had grease in quite a while now that we're back here at our first lift cylinder you're going to want to check a look just like this this cylinder isn't leaking yet it might be starting to get a little damp as they call it but it's not actually leaking hydraulic fluid out of it all this grease and oil and wet stuff you can see here is just grease that's over time worked its way down around the top of the cylinder here and when i steam clean it that should all go away and that should look nice and dry again this particular machine has a sight glass down here that shows you your hydraulic oil level so they get full of dirt so you clean it off as best you can and there's a little ball floating in there i'm not sure if you guys are going to be able to see but there's a small ball that floats in the sight glass and we'll show you the level this one is still over full but does leak a little bit so that's why i have it over full so we looked at our cylinders they're nice and dry at least this one is you're going to want to be looking at all your hydraulic lines the soft lines as well as we keep continuing around the machine here these ones have abrasion covers on them so that's good that keeps the uv the sunlight off of them because uv does kill rubber hoses as well as snags and just abrasion from them rubbing on each other because this arm constantly pivoting up and down means these lines are rubbing on each other all the time so they will eventually wear through and blow everywhere all right now we're onto the back of the machine here on a bobcat and lots of other manufacturers these lights back here are not very well protected i'm guilty as anybody i've backed into you know small trees and bushes things like that and you break the covers off of these and they push inside of the housing here so that's not really a big deal but it's just it says something about the way it was run and maintained and you know when you work them out here in the woods and really get into the work sometimes you do lose track of yourself and bump into something it happens you're working in tight spots out here but uh so the next thing i pay attention to is the door these are made out of pretty heavy steel but i have seen plenty of them caved in and dented and kinked and a lot of the newer machines are not made out of nearly as heavy steel as these older machines are and they they crunch up pretty easy so be paying attention make sure the hinges work okay make sure the latch is easy to operate i was just looking at a t-190 a couple weeks ago at the bobcat dealership and this latch on the t-190 which is the same machine with tracks on it i couldn't even get it to move so there is that they if you back into something really hard with the door or bow something or bend something these latches become quite hard to operate which that's just one more thing you gotta fix now we're on to the engine here so pay attention to all your filters here i personally write all the hours and the dates i changed everything on the filters so i know how long it's been since i've changed things so we're getting close here to a oil and a fuel filter change but we're still in the green right now obviously before you ever start the machine when you show up you should check all your fluids so make sure your oil isn't super dirty or thick or crusty looking i always take a little bit on my finger kind of rub it around see if you can see any sparkly metal shavings in it or anything if you can see any kind of metal flakes in the oil i'd stay away from it unless it's a heck of a deal or you're just looking for a project so this has a four cylinder kubota diesel on it these have a pretty good reputation as far as i know i've never had any problems with this one knock on some wood i have replaced a starter on it but relatively cheap in the aftermarket check all over your engine you're going to want to look all over the place any place you can stick your head into down around the back on the sides in the front everywhere you can looking for oil leaks or wet spots where it looks like there are some fluids leaking from your engine this one stays pretty darn dry i have noticed in the past few months that it looks like i'm starting to get a little bit of oil coming out around this fuel shut off on this machine here you can see i have some oil puddled up back here it's it's pretty dirty in there there's lots of crustiness that as i've mentioned this machine needs cleaned desperately but the dirt accumulates in there over time that's normal but as you can see it's soaked with oil so you've got to find the reason it's soaked with oil now because i've owned this machine for a number of years i can tell you the why reason that's wet in there is because i had a hydraulic line blow way back up underneath the cab there and it dumped gallons and gallons of hydraulic oil inside the belly pan which has nowhere to go so it basically just soaked into all the dirt that's in the machine here so when we clean it we'll have to shovel all that out of there and steam clean it off as best we can i hate wiring on anything electrical nightmares drive me crazy so i always take a look at all my connectors all my connections all the wiring harnesses and stuff and you know as you can see there's no electrical tape on this thing anywhere and factories typically don't use electrical tape on anything so if you see a big hunk of wiring harness it's got electrical tape wrapped around it somebody's probably been into there and they might have caused some harm they might have fixed it right but you just don't know so i'd peak that i'd peel that back if i was serious about buying a machine and i see some electrical tape all over a connection somewhere i'm gonna go ahead and unwrap that and see what they've done underneath there because somebody's been in there and tampered with it next thing is your air filter i would also check this before i start the machine but for the purposes of this video we're going to check it now these do get dusty it's not uncommon to pull one of these out and be able to knock it out like this filter in your sweeper but they are easily cleaned easily changed for the most part i just blow these out this one is getting quite a number of hours on it now so i probably will replace it next but there's two filters on most machines you got your outer filter now there's an inner filter and that's how i usually tell if it's time for a new filter versus just blow it out and there's going to be people in the comments arguing that you should never blow out a filter but i think those are just claims that the dealership tells you so you spend more money on filters i've worked on multi multi-million dollar projects with some massive massive contractors and the grease guy always comes around on the machines and blows them out with an air hose so i don't think there's any issues with that that right there yeah it's dusty but honestly it's not that bad i've seen you know when you pull the filter out of the housing a shovel full of dirt fall on the ground with it so if that happens yeah i'd probably question the air filter but like i say once you pull out your secondary filter that's what really tells the story you know you can have a shovel full of dirt come out of the primary filter and that's really not uncommon now if you pull out this secondary filter and it has dirt on it that means there's a hole in your primary filter and here's a chance a small chance that you may have gotten some dust into your engine which will wear out an engine quick fast in a hurry so i look at this secondary filter here and it still appears to be clean so that's a good sign nothing so primary filter is still all right the next thing you're going to look at on your machine and you're in the engine compartment here is your radiator now radiators on skid loaders can be mounted in a variety of places the case i just picked up from my buddy last week or a couple weeks ago whatever that was now there's a video on it on the channel but his radiator is mounted right on the back door here so as i said before if somebody caves in the back door good chance they can bow your radiator and it's going to crack on you bobcat radiators are mounted up here as well as your hydraulic cooler so this thing you're seeing right here is not actually the radiator that's the hydraulic cooler on this machine this is a steel hydraulic cooler so all these fins and the tubing that runs through the fins those are all steel now last year i think it was i had to seriously clean this one out because it had been full filled up with pine needles as i parked it under a pine tree for a year or so the machine had just gotten full of pine needles and what that did was hold moisture in there and get some rust on this uh cooler now it's not leaking yet but i noticed last year when i cleaned it out that there was some pitting on some of the pipes that run through the cooler so there is a chance that uh that's to rust through in some point and just blow hydraulic fluid everywhere the radiator in this machine is underneath the hydraulic cooler hard for you guys to see on camera but there is some junk under it again i'm gonna have to pull this cooler out yet again and sweep that off but that's pretty common in these machines especially running them in the woods you're always getting junk sucked up against the radiator and uh in this setup the radiator is not vertical it's laying down kind of so it just attracts dust and leaves and debris and everything that much easier your coolant on this machine you don't have a typical automotive radiator cap that has like a blow-off this is a d-gas bottle and this is how you check the antifreeze in this machine and probably really hard for you guys to tell but according to this little decal we are in the green so an easy trick you can do to check for a blown head gasket too is remove the radiator cap before you get any pressure in it remove the radiator cap and then start the machine up and let it run at like a medium idle and just sit here and watch the fluid in there and if you start seeing air bubbles coming up through the fluid then there's a good chance you have a blown head gasket something else to check back here on your engine is your water fuel separator so right here on the bottom of the fuel filter there's a little nut on most machines and you can just twist this thing loose and watch the fluid that comes out of there so in this case it looks like nice clean red diesel there's no water in the fuel system that's a really good sign now if you just get a few drops of water out of there that is not a big deal you just i'm kind of using that as something you can look at the color of the fuel and see if maybe there's an algae problem with the machine because if you don't know diesel fuel will grow algae in it and that can be an awful pain to get rid of sometimes you'll have to completely drain the fuel system and clean it and run all kind of additives through it and i've heard of machines that are pretty much just cursed with algae and it's almost impossible to get rid of them knock on wood i've never had a problem there are like i said additives you run to avoid that so over here on the other side of the machine we have a cylinder that is leaking i don't know if you guys can tell real well this cylinder has got oily dust all over it the whole cylinder is coated in it and what's happened is the seals here have started to give out and when you have the boom up in the air it lets a little bit of hydraulic oil come out with it so that's on the list of things that need to be fixed this winter i'm going to take that cylinder off i'm probably going to actually take all of them off and put some new seals in them really not a big thing to do that doesn't concern me too much but again that just depends on your handiness level if you feel like that's something you're willing to tackle not a big deal the parts aren't real expensive i think i was looking at a seal kit on ebay that had the seals to do all four cylinders on this machine for like 120 bucks or something so really not a big deal if you were to send that same cylinder to a hydraulic shop and have them professionally redo it i think you're looking at maybe 150 200 per cylinder so still not terribly priced but definitely can save a few bucks by doing it yourself so the last thing i can't show you today but i'll throw a clip in of me working on this machine just last week most machines the cab can flip up on them in fact i don't think i know of any machines that the cab can't open up somehow on and that gains you access underneath the cab to all the hydraulic lines your drive motors and all that stuff and you can really tell a lot by looking at the condition of all that under there as i said mine's covered in hydraulic oil and dirt right now but even that's not a terrible thing as long as it's not like fresh you know mine you can tell is from a blown line it's soaked in it's it's not fresh it's not liquid still it's just coated everything so open that up check all your hoses look at the condition of the hoses you know if they're dry rotted and the hoses have cracks all through them hoses are expensive i i haven't had a hydraulic hose made even a quarter inch one for under 60 80 bucks in the last few years pretty much every hose that you're going to buy is going to cost you quite a few dollars so that if all your hoses are cracked and dry rotted that's a serious chunk of change to replace those not to mention the downtime and the your time to work on it or pay somebody else to work on it so definitely think about that we're gonna go ahead and put this machine in the barn now and go take a look at a track [Music] machine [Music] so here we are looking at a bit bigger machine this is a t300 bobcat so the t is for tracked and this is a real rubber track undercarriage these machines this is quite a bit larger than mine too i believe this machine weighs about 11 500 pounds mine weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 000 something almost eight thousand this machine belongs to my neighbor this is a good example of a foot control machine only so the wrists up here your hands don't do anything but control your tracks forward and backward and your foot pedals down there run your boom so if you're looking to buy one of these rubber track machines you've got to take a good look at these tracks i think these things can run about 2 000 aside somewhere around that depends on what style of track you get and where you get them from so you look at the the depth on these grousers here and this this particular track i'd say is probably about 80 85 percent these are still pretty new got a lot of life then life left in them so uh you're gonna look at the depth of the tread you're gonna look at down in this area how tour up these are how much rubber is left down around the uh the chain that goes around the inside of this rubber track and you're gonna look for cuts and tears if these things are run in a lot of like rocky conditions or you know broken building material and rubble these things have big gouges and chunks taken out of the track and slices in them and everything else uh the same thing on the inside here you're gonna have to really pay attention if you've got any broken links you'll see some distortion in the track i wish i had an example to show you but you can uh definitely tell when you've got a busted link in there these tracks will look real cattywompus and usually it'll pop off pretty easy when there's a busted link now to check your actual undercarriage on these machines the easiest thing to do is jack it up with the bucket here and get that off the ground if these tracks are real loose that's a sign that maybe you have a bad adjuster it also could just mean they have it improperly adjusted you got to pay attention to stuff like that i've seen a few issues on these style of machines where the frame cracks in this area there's not a lot of meat right up here holding the idler in so i'd look for that your idler while you're driving the machine you should pay attention if you hear any squeaking bad bushing noises this idler wheel in here that the track rides on has a big pin and bushing inside of it and uh if that goes bad the track will weeble wobble back and forth all these small rollers down here while the machine's up in the air go ahead and give those a roll they should feel stiff but not tight and they shouldn't have any kind of rumble or noise to them these ones all feel well that one's bad right there perfect example bad roller so the bearing shot in that thing and that needs replaced so you have another idler down here at the bottom this particular one is seeing a good bit of wear on it it's got these kind of divots that are matching the track grooves here so you have one of these bars every couple inches that is what engages in your drive sprocket here and this rear idler is getting quite a bit of wear to match the chain it kind of has some divots there it's not bad it's not going to hurt anything but that's not the way they come so you can just tell that's got some wear on it the last thing to check while you're down here is your drive sprocket this one here you kind of look and see make sure your teeth are symmetrical they will wear on one side and these guys here wearing worn right here a bit they got a deeper throat in this side than this side and you can tell that this is getting a bit gapped not bad there is still probably this sprocket's probably 80 probably still they probably replaced these sprockets when they did this track this machine is also a great example of bad bushings in your tilt cylinders here watch the tilt cylinders and how they move independently from the quick attach plate when i run them in and out those bushings are very bad and they're probably so bad that they've worn into the cylinders and they probably can't be replaced without sending to a machine shop now the last thing i can think to tell you guys about here is to listen to your drive motors and your hydraulic pump if you go to run a bucket function like this and it sounds like it's really laboring the engine like it makes the engine really work hard you could have a pump going bad or if the engine doesn't make any noise at all like you're not doing any load onto the engine then your hydraulic pump could be bypassing you could be also having a bad hydraulic pump now your drive motors are just a hydraulic motor that run off your pump so if they make all kind of noise when you're running them back and forth or if you're seemed to have more power on one side than the other you could also have a drive going bad so the best way to test the drive motors that i know of without you know diagnostic tools that a tech would only have is hopefully you have a place you can run the machine around and actually get to use it a little bit before you buy it if you get a big bucket of dirt or find a pile you can push into and you're running both drives forward like i said if one feels weaker than the other one you'll feel the resistance in your hands if one feels weaker than the other one and you could have a drive going bad and these particular machines it could also be an adjustment but i'd definitely be leery and like i said also if one side makes a lot of noise kind of whining sound uh that's also a sign they're starting to go bad so if you're looking at a more modern machine a lot of these bigger ones over a certain horsepower are going to have some sort of exhaust after treatment for pollution levels they either have just a regular exhaust filter or they have a def system which will take the diesel exhaust fluid and you got to put it in every x amount of hours depends on how hard you're working the machine but there's a lot of problems with those systems and they've been getting better but they're still pretty problematic so me personally i avoid that stuff but people run them every day so it's inevitable you might have to get one but just do your do your research on those i really don't know enough about them to advise you on them but they can be very very costly to repair and i know that the filters in them have to be sent away and cleaned and that gets very expensive and they're only really good for so many hours so if you're looking at a machine that has a dpf filter or a def system on it look at the manufacturers information on it and see how many hours that system is rated to run before it needs service because as i said they'd be very expensive to send away and get cleaned well that ended up being a much longer video than i anticipated and i'm sure i still missed plenty of things i do these videos just kind of off the top of my head so uh my thoughts aren't always the most organized uh sometimes i forget stuff so if you are watching this video and you're in the market for a new machine check down in the comments i encourage you to definitely read through the comments because there's going to be lots of people adding other things that i probably missed or didn't think of so that's uh that's about the best i can advise you though good luck to you i definitely recommend having a skid steer in your arsenal if that's the only machine you got you can get a lot done with one piece of equipment and i could never live without one ever again so that's all for today guys if you liked the video don't forget to give me a thumbs up it really helps the channel out hit subscribe if you like this kind of content and i will see you guys on the next one thanks for watching later [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Diesel Creek

Views: 249,892

Rating: 4.9202414 out of 5

Keywords: uses, skid, steer, loader, equipment, ctl, track, tire, bobcat, ghale, takeuchi, john, deere, kubota, melroe, ingersol, case, cat, caterpillar, komatsu, volvo, jcb, wacker, neuson, diesel, detroit, cummins, turbo, boom, attachment, OTT, grouser, prowler, construction, blue book, buyers guide, craigslist, marketplace, farm, woods, rural

Id: tkDftX570l8

Length: 47min 27sec (2847 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020