[Stonehenge]

Every year in my market it seems someone goes out of biz, or closes down their shop. Often this means there's a used skid steer, either for sale or at auction.

I know there are guys out there that take good care of their equipment - problem is, I don't know who they are.

If I have the opportunity to buy a used skid steer, what kinds of things should I look at and look for?

[Bill Schwab]

Look first at hours on the clock, and how many scratches dings and dents are on the belly pans, loader boom, check the hinge bushings to see how tight they are, and look at the grease zirts to see if they take grease. You might even want to bring a gun with you and pump some in. If they don't take it, that is a sign of not being greased enough.

If a machine is a few years old, has been repainted and has new decals, and you can see scrapes into the steel in places, that is a good chance you are getting an old whore with a new dress. I would stay away unless you are looking for something to run as a back up. We are looking at a 5 year old Cat right now, and all that machine will do is sit in the yard and load materials before the trucks pull out. Even if it smokes alot, it's a moot point.

With any deisel engines, while it is running, remove the oil fill cap. If you see alot of smoke comming from the hole, that is a sign of blow by, or, weak compression. Ideally, if you can pull the injectors and take a compression test, anything between 350 to 420 lbs is acceptable, and you need to make sure each cylinder is evenly matched to the next. In other words, you should not have a significant difference on your numbers. If one is say 350, and all the rest are 420, you have a problem starting to cook.

How do all the safety switches perform? Do the guages work?

You can get oil tests done pretty cheap, and they will tell what is if anything, beginning to decompose prior to breaking all the way.

Tire wear is another thing to consider. We found skid steer tires to wear out around 500 hours. If you have a machine with 250 hours and the tires have been trashed, that's a sign of a beating.

[Stonehenge]

Thanks for all the good info. I'm going to print this off for future use...

I have a related question, but for our current machine. Seems that in time all machines get one lift arm out of whack relative to the other. The result is a bucket that digs more on one side than the other. Is there a way to fix this?

[Bill Schwab]

Jeff:

Gehl builds their booms pretty solidly, And short of removing the boom and tweeking the part where it is bent, I am betting it is more a problem related to the hinge or lift pins. Our 4615 used to eat them, other than that it was a great machine. There is a bucket pivot made for most machines, where for $1500 or so, you hook it to the pig tails for the hydro system, and you can rock the bocket up to 22.5° either side. This is a very cool feature when grading on slopes, or if you need to cut swales or even if you are on slightly tilted ground and are moving a pallet of something and have to set it down on ground at a different level.

It basically does the same thing as a 6 way blade, except with a bucket. To clarify, are you saying that if you park the machine on level flat concrete, place the bucket all the way down, that one side is on the pavement, and the other is off the pavement?

[Stonehenge]

If I force it all the way down on level, flat concrete, I can get it flat. But if I just bring it to the point where it first touches concrete, one side touches 1" or so before the other. This difference is amplified when we're excavating, because the low side digs in first, and deeper (which probably makes the problem worse).

We have two weight kits on the back to help us lift big skids of materials - if what you're saying is correct, that could be why - the pins are just wearing out from 6 years of use.

Hey Bill - you must have a very good memory - I didn't mention anywhere here what brand machine we were using.