John Deere 25 mini parts availability.

So I am looking at buying a 1980's john deere 25. He says it Has a couple bad bottom rollers, sloppy bucket bushings, the swing bearing on the turntable rocks a little , and overall it works fine and runs good. It is in my price range of under 10k which is pretty rare for anything that even works. I am wondering if I buy if what kind of a snake pit I could be getting into finding parts. I work on my backhoe and dozer in my garage and don't mind doing the work it's just scary wondering if I will be able to find stuff for it. Does anybody know if there is a yanmar excavator that uses the same undercarriage parts? how hard would it be to convert it to rubber tracks? heres a cuple pics

Get the serial number and check with a dealer.

i guess i just crossed that option off the list without thinking. When i got my 426 cat i called the dealer on some hyd cyl's it needed and it was like we were talking about spending monopoly money. I wound up rebuilding the transmission clutch packs, charge pump, and most hyd cyls with aftermarket parts. Had I went the dealer route it would have been cheaper to buy a new machine. It just seems like looking on ebay/google i dont see any sprockets or rollers ect like i see for the other makes of machines.

It wasn't built by Deere, was it? find out who made it and if it's a rebadged version of something else.

Otherwise rollers can be rebuilt, even if it's a hack job it should last fine on something like this. Bucket bushings you might be able to find stock sizes, or machine them. I would plan on NOT replacing anything major like the tracks or turntable bearing, it's just not worth the trouble on something that small and cheap. Just consider it disposable. Which brings up the question of why you want a mini excavator if you have a backhoe already? It's pretty marginal to do paying work with something like this, isn't it? and if it's a hobby, then you're already doing the work to keep up the backhoe...

I'm not doing any paying work, just around the house stuff. Mostly picking things up and moving them. I did a lot of heavy land clearing with the backhoe but now that I am done with big stumps the backhoe is just sort of too big to do anything with. It leaves big ruts everywhere it goes. Burns a lot of fuel. generally just leaves things looking worse than they were before I got it out. The biggest job for the excavator would be cleaning out the ditches on my 1/2 mile road to my house. I was thinking I would hook a small dump trailer up to the ball that is on the blade and just drive along cleaning and putting the muck in the wagon. I dread doing it with my backhoe because I have to get in and out between my 1 ton dump and the backhoe as I go along. I can build up the track links and sprockets with weld. put new bearings in the bottom rollers but the biggest ??? is that turntable bearing or if a final drive goes out. when is too much slop a problem on that turntable? seems like it would but a lot put a lot of stress on the motor that spins it. he said he rebuilt 1 final when he got the machine 5 years ago. I would really like to know if it is a rebranded something else. that may be a good question for a dealer.

That was built by Yanmar for Deere. They also made a 50.

ok so is there an 1980's yanmar model I can look up to try and find alternate parts?

gusbratz, you shouldn't have to change any of the U/C to covert steel to rubber. Just check your sprockets and make sure they aren't too worn or sharp.

Looks like a B27, or the older YB221(?)

boy that yanmar yb351 sure looks just like it. here is the current sprocket. should last a long time for the hours I am going to put on it. I may tear into it this winter and build it up with weld.

those don't look to bad, the rubber track size should be a 300x100x43 (I'm 95% sure on that) but if you ever want to convert it let me know. I would just need the link count, pitch and inner guide measurement to figure it out.

I have a JD 25 ...can you help me find rubber tracks?

huckleberry2017 said:

those don't look to bad, the rubber track size should be a 300x100x43 (I'm 95% sure on that) but if you ever want to convert it let me know. I would just need the link count, pitch and inner guide measurement to figure it out.

Click to expand...

huckleberry2017 said:

those don't look to bad, the rubber track size should be a 300x100x43 (I'm 95% sure on that) but if you ever want to convert it let me know. I would just need the link count, pitch and inner guide measurement to figure it out.

Click to expand...

It has after market final drives and sprockets.