Hey guys just wanted to stop in and say hi, and I have a few questions as well. I'm new to motor graders (my experience is operating excavators, and to a lesser extent dozers and skid steers) anyways I bought a hillside blueberry farm in NH a few years ago and I've been struggling with road maintenance ever since. I've tried skid steers, dozers, homebrew drags, york rakes etc. They all would get me by but none of them really did what I was looking for. Then I found a guy renting a mini grader on FB marketplace and it was the answer to my prayers 
For cost/trucking and scheduling reasons I decided I would buy my own to have here on site and to also help out some of the local guys having the same problems. Anyways after looking forever I finally found a 1990 or 1991?? Gehl 747 mini motor grader in working condition so I scooped it up. After getting it home I realized info and parts are about non existent. Luckily it didn't need too much and in a past life I was a mechanic/fabricator. Now that I've owned this for about 6 months I've got some questions I'm hoping you guys can help me out with.
Does anybody know where to get a factory service manual or anything similar?
The hour meter on this works and reads 389 hours... Should I be suspicious of that? Seems oddly low
Should the rear scarifier be able to pick up the machine? Mine does not. (Not that I need it to but it just seems a little weak)
What should the tire pressures be? I have them at 30psi now
This machine came to me with the foot brake not working because the master cylinder was blown out. Turned out the master cylinder was an old Ford single line master, so I replaced it and got the brake system working. It all looks factory but with the brakes working properly it still has very minimal braking. It's a single rotor on the drive shaft and a non power master so the pedal doesn't do a whole lot (to stop it going down hill it takes 2 feet and all the force I can apply)... Is this typical for a machine like this? I will definitely need to do some kind of upgrade because of the hills I need to grade (I'm thinking maybe a hydroboost booster mod) (pic of brake setup below)
Has anybody seen what the parking brake setup is supposed to be on these? I looked all over the internet and I couldn't find any info or pictures... Everything except for the caliper and rotor are missing. I ended up rigging up a temporary setup to just see how it would work. My system definitely needs improving.
My last question is regarding shifting... This thing has a torque converter to shuttle shift to manual gear box type setup. It has 4 gears. 3 and 4 seem to be just for transport. My question is how are you supposed to get into 3 or 4? It doesn't seem to want to shift "on the fly" and if you put it into 3 or 4 from a stop on flat ground the gearing is too tall and it just stalls the torque converter.
For cost/trucking and scheduling reasons I decided I would buy my own to have here on site and to also help out some of the local guys having the same problems. Anyways after looking forever I finally found a 1990 or 1991?? Gehl 747 mini motor grader in working condition so I scooped it up. After getting it home I realized info and parts are about non existent. Luckily it didn't need too much and in a past life I was a mechanic/fabricator. Now that I've owned this for about 6 months I've got some questions I'm hoping you guys can help me out with. Does anybody know where to get a factory service manual or anything similar?
The hour meter on this works and reads 389 hours... Should I be suspicious of that? Seems oddly low
Should the rear scarifier be able to pick up the machine? Mine does not. (Not that I need it to but it just seems a little weak)
What should the tire pressures be? I have them at 30psi now
This machine came to me with the foot brake not working because the master cylinder was blown out. Turned out the master cylinder was an old Ford single line master, so I replaced it and got the brake system working. It all looks factory but with the brakes working properly it still has very minimal braking. It's a single rotor on the drive shaft and a non power master so the pedal doesn't do a whole lot (to stop it going down hill it takes 2 feet and all the force I can apply)... Is this typical for a machine like this? I will definitely need to do some kind of upgrade because of the hills I need to grade (I'm thinking maybe a hydroboost booster mod) (pic of brake setup below)
Has anybody seen what the parking brake setup is supposed to be on these? I looked all over the internet and I couldn't find any info or pictures... Everything except for the caliper and rotor are missing. I ended up rigging up a temporary setup to just see how it would work. My system definitely needs improving.
My last question is regarding shifting... This thing has a torque converter to shuttle shift to manual gear box type setup. It has 4 gears. 3 and 4 seem to be just for transport. My question is how are you supposed to get into 3 or 4? It doesn't seem to want to shift "on the fly" and if you put it into 3 or 4 from a stop on flat ground the gearing is too tall and it just stalls the torque converter.
