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QUESTION:The new Trader paper came out this morning, there was a Case 580B 40 miles
away for $6900. I called the guy, went and looked at it, and bought it.
The only other things around in this price range were 580 CK's with gas
engine, leaky cylinders, and the engine burnt oil.
Anyway, it started right up and ran good. On a pretty low throttle setting
he lifted the tractor with the front loader and backhoe (bucket, not
stabilizers). Bottom line was that everything seemed to work good, engine
seemed good, etc. I know it isn't the machine that the 580K with
Extend-a-hoe is, but it was also $10,000 cheaper and looked like it would do
the work I'm needing to do. The price was even lower than most of the farm
tractors with front end loaders of that age and size.
The guy has some kind of attachment for the rear where you take the backhoe
off and can mount a blade, etc. He says it has hydraulic down. He said
he'd sell it for $300 with the backhoe, does anyone know if this type of
attachment might make a good mount for a forklift mast? Thought it might be
nice if I could change out from backhoe to forklift.
If I figure I need a better backhoe, I could probably sell this one right
away and get one without a lot of money lost. A local Case dealer has a
580B listed for $9,950 but it's a pretty nice looking low hour machine.
Anyway, I figure I didn't spend much more than I would have if I built a CAD
digger, although the CAD Digger would be new.
ANSWER: I barely know what I'm talking about with backhoes. That said,
The back blade attachment may be a box scraper, for grading a crown into
roads, that is one thing it is ordinarily difficult to do with a backhoe.
Could be handy if you won't have a dozer available.
Forks ordinarily just hang from a rail over the loader bucket (with the
bucket in place). The forks are way out in front of the front wheels so the
payload is limited, but still way useful.
I think you made a reasonable investment. I bought a completely trashed but
running old Bobcat skid steer 12 years ago for $3000 and for the first few
years worried it was a waste of $. Still going strong today, I use it all
the time for dirt work and as a forklift for all sort of lifting, carrying,
loading. Now it looks like a pretty smart investment.
Power down is useful with a blade or box scraper because it lets you
transfer some tractor weight to the implement, forcing the blade to dig
in when you hit a hard spot. You can't go too far with this, though, or
you'll lose traction and the wheels will just spin. Mostly, 3 pt hitch setups
are power up, lift only, so they can't do this. Having power down is a
nice bonus feature.
More common on farm tractors is a traction control feature which
automatically transfers some of the weight of the implement to the
tractor when wheelspin is detected. This is useful for implements
like a mouldboard plow, which tend to dig in too much when they
hit a soft spot. Traction control picks up a bit on the plow, transfering
that digging in force to the wheels to improve traction and reduce
the tendency of the plow to head toward China. You can do the
same thing by hand with a 3 pt that doesn't have this feature, but
it is nice to have.
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