Undercarriage on heavy equipment is usually the largest expense. On rubber tracked equipment like skid loaders the tracks are about 30% of the maintenance cost in the first 3 years. If you buy a used piece of equipment with steel tracks a new set of tracks can easily be half the cost of that machine.
Then that moment comes when the new kid is hired and you go to clean a file and look in the drawer and find it missing. Then you see him cleaning greasy parts with it because he thought it was a wire brush🙄
I'm lucky enough to work on the family farm. My grandfather grew up in the depression so he didn't throw ANYTHING away. His dad had him straighten bent nails on rainy days. My dad is not mechanical but I love it all. He bought me a jacked up 78 ram, handed me a Haynes manual and said I'll buy the parts you fix it. I did and he hauled me and my truck to mud boggs. There's so many cool tools around there. I have my grandfather's, great grandfather's original wooden tool boxes not too mention everything in the old shop. There's an old Chesapeake Ohio railroad 18" American lathe in the old shop. I heard a story that the motor went out on the tractor one afternoon and they stayed in that wooden building and fixed it all night driving it out at sunrise. I've bought a south bend heavy 10 for $300 at an estate sale a few years back. Got a nice bridgeport this year with a crap load of tooling. I have made a bunch of things for the farm and friends. My dad doesn't even question my machine tool purchases anymore lol. That says a lot. I've been able to get us out of a few right situations already. It feels good to know you have the tools and can fix just about anything you need to on the spot. Especially the way parts are priced right now.
Uhhh...okay I'm a heavy equipment mechanic and 10k per tire is just kind of absurd 😅 even 5k is. They are a long ways from cheap but most loader/ grader tires can be had for 700-1500 bucks each
“We put the heads on”. “We realised the guy that put the heads on put them on the wrong way around”. That ladies & gentleman, is called “distancing yourself”. 😊
Not as ideal as it seems. Expensive. Adds massive rotating "inertia" weight. The same severe injury that takes out an air tire also marks a filled tires death, it's just a bit slower.
Price a foam fill on that tire and you’ll disagree, slices tire and will still come apart and extra rolling weight can’t destroy machines drivetrain depending on application
Im just wondering how many hours one or 2 people have to spend trying to air up tires before it justifies buying some decent used ones? Or if possible having the ones you have repaired. Those look like they have decent tread justcleak air im assuming.
