your right, i consider ease of maintaince to be changing of filters, oil changes. I dont look at changing starters, or alternators or belts. I keep my machines to about 1800-3000 hours depending on the machine and the work load. The number of starters replaced is zero, alternators zero, belts zero. Skid steers no matter what color are not easy to work on. Ease of day to day fluid checks and greasing is very important. Replacing these components and turbos and so forth, i dont worry about and my experience over almost 20 years of running these things has shown its not something i need to concern myself with.
That would be why the differing opinions may occur. For regular maintenance, strictly filters and fluids, the L220 was not terrible. The oil filter setup was a little screwy, but it was otherwise okay. The inline fuel filter was not easy to access either but the rest was. Our current partner who runs the 3 Bobcats at the other farm, had an L215 for 1000hrs. It wasn't well liked there either. The air filter was not easy to access they said and it had its share of issues. It was one of the very first ones though which I know had a lot of updates. He demoed a Cat but traded for an S130. I cannot remember what the L220 was like but our older new hollands had a lot of exposed grease zerks that would get smashed off. We built guards for many of them. I like and hate the recessed ones that the Cat's have. Our Volvo loader also has these. If I could find a plug to put in each one it may speed up greasing. I take the time to go around and pull the crap out of them first before greasing which takes a little while but on the flipside I don't have to spend time extracting broken zerks. The lower lift arm pin and lower "pivot arm" pin both have too small of a hole to fit in our large high pressure fittings. We went through Lincoln high pressure fittings every week until I found these 3 jaw ones from some other company for $12 each. They last a couple months. Its not a big deal, i just get those ones with the hand gun.
I will say Cat putting the hydraulic tank fill under the rear of the cab was kind of annoying on the C series. They say you cannot fill the tank without tilting the cab. They reccommend topping off through the fill plug for the cooler. I use a pail pump with a gooseneck on it for filling the tanks on all of them. I can squeeze my fingers up in there and pop the cap off and stick the neck in without flipping the cab but it is tight.
I think most of the machines are easy to do filters, fluids and greasing on. At least the ones I have been around. Some I have only seen opened up at trade shows which doesn't always give the best impression.
I guess I maybe should change my opinion somewhat more towards yours as we plan to now rotate the fleet on a bi-annual basis which will keep all of the machines under warranty and low houred which should result in less need for the more involved repairs. I still do give it some thought though because there are still some things I will need to fix. A blown hose is not going to send me into Cat. I'm going to dig it out and make a new one in our shop. Saves time.
However, when giving opinions to others, I think it is important both you, I and everyone else includes what their point of view is. Until this point I thought you were smoking crack or wearing case underwear by thinking the machine was easy to work on. Not everyone is buying new or trading often and gets stuck doing a lot of the repairs which is when that becomes more important.
Damage protection is another big concern for my decisions. The Big ass on the CNH machines and the amount of flimsy components back there did cause issues for us in the short 280hr stint. A couple blows and everything was misaligned. Our Cat doors have some scratches in the rear door stickers, some paint rubbed off the rear bumper and the "pivot" arm, but the door is perfectly straight and closes like a dream. Our New Holland and Bobcat doors do not last long as they are the first line of defense. The new CNH machines recessed the door, but it is flush with no protrusions above or below it like our Cats have. In addition, the rear end is just too wide and meets its fair share of walls. Again though, my opinion and viewpoint comes from having not very good operators. We never will have a lot of good operators because skid steer operation is just a small portion of their jobs. If we had full time operators making union wage in them it may be a different story.
no my wheeled machine is a case 465
I wonder if that is where some of the differences in opinions are coming from. Maybe the wheel machines are different. IIRC your machine also has a radial boom. The Super Boom has a lot of slop in it even new. We have never had one that didn't hit the cab after a short period of running it and this one was no exception. Again, this could be our environment. Our skid steers spend more time with side load on the bucket from scraping against curbs, or pushing up feed, than they do with lateral forces from digging and lifting.
i am not disagreeing that good service is can be subjective and inconsistant. I just dont see case sitting on their hands if their machines have problem. I am not saying they are perfect, far from it, but if their machines have engineering defects, my experience and my exposure to these guys is that they will fix it. As far as going above the dealer, yea i would if i needed to, but my dealer does a great job of going to bat for me. However i have no problem going above them and finding my own solutions to problems if thats what needs to be done. I am in business to make money. I buy the equipment that i think offers me the chance of being successful. If the equipment is defective or does not produce as it should, i will work a solution that is in my best interest.
My experiences with CNH have been decent. My experiences are from the Ag sector mostly, but compared to my dealings with Deere and Agco CNH is not bad. I never had to deal with CNH construction much because we never had many new machines and the ones we did ran fine. My relatives did have to deal with them a lot with all of their L170 and L175 issues and for the most part CNH was decent. There have been some issues with them on some other products, but as a whole I'd rate them 3 out of 5. Nothing great, nothing bad. Deere was very bad to deal with. They just don't think anything can go wrong with any of their stuff. Agco is too disorganized with too much politics and too many egos in the way of just getting the job done. Volvo has been good to deal with but there again, we haven't had many issues. Cat has really surprised me with their involvement and help throughout or dealings with them. We dealt with that dealer in the past when we had one Cat wheel loader and it was a nightmare, we didn't matter. Now with only 3 skid steers from them, the service from the dealer and Cat themselves have been great. We had issues with our Poly doors not staying in. They didn't know why and hadn't had many other complaints with the newer style, but were quick and helpful with replacing them with glass. They listen to the ideas we have for improvements, and its been good overall. Claas is another company that has been just like that. They are involved with you the entire way. Their engineers sometimes get on some peoples nerves due to being German and having a natural tendancy to never be wrong (my family is all German too so I am used to it) but for the most part they are helpful. You go to their product meetings and its all about updates and new ideas for the machines. Most updates are free or cheap. When we went to the Deere meetings it was all about how awesome they were. Nothing about updates and they didn't listen to our problems, just said they will be fixed with the next new chopper (they told us this in 08, it is a prototype now and may be for sale in 2014). We traded to the Claas after 2.5 years with the Deere. They make the updates to the current and even non current machines. They don't make you buy a newer model.
i dont see it like this. I am not that big of operation, i purchased a number of machines but i have been doing this for almost 2 decades. I work hard for my dealer, and i expect them to do the same. I help out the salesman, i have lent them back my machines to do customer demos with, if they dont have a certain machine that a customer wants to demo. I give them leads on guys i know that wanting to add or replace equipment and so on. I have worked with case on making improvements and offer suggestions to improve their product. They have included me in customer clinics at the factory and proving grounds. If i have a problem i expect it to be taken care of. Its a two way street, i help them and they help me and the day my dealer or case fails to recognize that or live up to that is the day i run a different color. So far its working well.
In my opinion, coming from my area and the way things are with dealers around here. Someone with more than 2 or 3 SSL's is an important purchaser to the dealers. I am not referring to national fleets, just bigger local operators. They have more pull and get treated better than the guy with one or two machines generally. Its natural.