opinions on Mustang brand track loaders

I think those are made by Gehl, the older ones were made by Takeuchi for Gehl/ Mustang. I have NEVER seen one, but have never seen many Gehls or newer Mustangs in my area either so that's not saying much... I also think Yanmar may have rebadged them as well but I'm not 100% sure about that. I belive I heard rumblings that when Gehl first released their own machines they were having issues breaking tilt cylinders? The first thing I would look at is dealer support near you and if there is a dealer close by see if they will give contact info of someone who owns one so you can get some first hand knowledge of the good, bad, and ugly.

i Don’t have much experience with them but I’ve seen the same broken down mustang at a guys house I drive past for quite a while now...

When I was doing my CTL research the older gehls/mustangs were good. They were manufactured by TK I believe. THe newer mustangs I believe are manuf by gehl I think. From what I understand, the newer gehls are nothing to write home about from what I understand. Not a first hand experience, just hours of sifting through posts, data etc.

They were bought by Manitou some years ago. They went into an agreement with Yanmar. Yanmar provides Gehl/Mustang with mini excavators/CWL's and Yanmar sells their SSL and CTL's. Gehl struggled with EH and then went back to Pilot controlled machines, not sure where that is currently. Historically, I think Gehl built a durable machine, popular with farmers. Always a little primitive, but were generally durable. Their Taki built machines of course were popular. Their newest machines built totally by themselves, I don't think have that same level durability. I spent sometime at their site at Conexpo. They clearly dont have the build quality that the more popular machines have. Wield quality is not as clean was the first thing I noticed in comparison to others. The interiors are not as refined. Their resale is clearly a downer looking on Equipment trader. I personally would pass on an RT series, unless it was a great deal and you have a dealer to support it. We don't have a Gehl or Mustang dealer anywhere near us, but I have never seen any contractor using their SSL or CTL's in this area. The Yanmar excavators though do have a following here.

That should be the same machine as the Gehl RT175. You have a good Manitou dealer in the area? New or used, how many hours?

Have had regular issues with the current Gehl machines where the engine wire harness connects to the machine harness under the cab. 4 plugs that are mounted so close together the wires rub pinholes into each other and throw all kinds of intermittent codes and short out the EGR pressure sensor ($$$). About every weird code that pops up on a low hour machine you can go right to that bunch of wiring on the machine side and find a rub through.

Only other regular issues we run into are the foot throttle on the joystick machines getting packed with mud and freezing solid, the bucket tilt bleeding down (one of the spools gets bent and bleeds off, whole valve body gets replaced), and the usual emissions hiccups everything has (especially when people bypass regen until the machine goes into derate). That and the engineers seem to use a dartboard to decide where filters and the computer plug in should be mounted on every machine.

thanks for all the feed back and sorry for delay getting back here
have a ton of dealers in area, so support is there in spades

know a owner of a like machine and they have had nothing but good luck

but as we all know, it comes down to how a machine was used, abused and or cared for when dealing with used things

but thanks for the info

The hydraulic track tension system is kinda a trip. We only had a few that where bought as field testing units. The cabs where great. Doors sealed up nice and tight. Pretty quiet inside. I however did not the arm rests. My knees always seemed to be banging into them constantly. Also with the door it was really hard to get a clear view of hooking up an attachment
Not a good line of site. Only real problem we had was if anything ever got into the huge fuel filler neck it always got stuck in the 90 degree fitting on the fuel filter base. Of course if you own it that probably wont happen since your most likely not going to be pouring fuel in from old buckets you found on a job site or siphoning fuel from somebody's reach fork with a garden hose you borrowed from the guys who just drug it through it concrete. If you got good dealer support like it sounds like you do i would defiantly give them a look. Its like i tell everyone but it usually falls on deaf ears. Your really only buying a gehl, bobcat, deere body. Its the same engine, hydraulics, controls, pumps, final drives ect ect. If you took all the running components from three machines and tossed them all into a pile you would be hard pressed to know what hydraulic pump came from what machine. IMO service after the sale is what makes or breaks it for most owners.