Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, September 24, 2003 at 0:39AM :
In Reply to: OT/bought a backhoe today posted by Dave Jensen on Tuesday, September 23, 2003 at 4:24AM :
It's been nothing but trouble for me. I'm now in the midst of an in-frame engine rebuild (compression was lousy and then it spun a rod bearing). I've had it for 10 years and haven't gotten any useful work out of it yet. The hydraulics are okay, though the pins are of course all kind of loose. It's a pain to work on because JD took a standard row-crop tractor and built a backhoe/loader frame around it. That makes it heavier than a dedicated backhoe and the added stuff seems to all be in the way of something. It's really hard to even change the battery due to a bunch of hydraulic hoses running across where the battery slides in. To separate the engine from the tranmission (such as to work on the clutch), one has to first remove the loader bucket and frame from the front. Not easy. The diesel engine is scarce and the only rebuild parts are from John Deere. The cylinder liners come as an assembly of 4 liners and a "deck plate", which alone costs $450. I figure the rebuild (liners, pistons, rings, rod & main bearings, and gaskets) will cost me $1500-$2000 for parts alone. I wish I had paid more and gotten a Case or Ford, but I got the 2010 in a deal for a bunch of stuff associated with a small derilect sawmill, and it seemed like a good deal at the time.
The 2010 backhoe is a pretty good sized machine, definitely not a "garden tractor", so I hope that with a strong engine it will be able to do some real work. One thing to look out for is it very much wants to tip over backwards when going up even a slight hill. Best to chain the backhoe bucket up close when not using it, and get a load of dirt in the loader bucket when going up a hill.
I had to do the brakes too. It's not too hard, though I had to turn the hole in the cover for the linkage into a slot in order to get the stack of brake disks and plates all onto the splined shaft properly.
Other than that, good luck!
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