new holland lx985- keep or buy new?

[bullit340]

I always ran bobcats but picked up this used 1999 nh lx985 a couple years ago and ended up liking nh so much I sold the new bobcat. It has 2300 hrs on it, has seen some hard use and its a little loose and I am sorta woried about what might go wrong in the next 700+ hrs. Any idea what tends to go on these with this kind of hours. I am not worried about bearings and bucket pins, hoses etc... more so woried about major things like pumps, two speed stuff.

Demoed a new one this week and it was nice but way expensive. From reading the forum it seems that the newer stuff has more problems than the older stuff, could mean nothing though. I am just thinking it might be a good time to upgrade before I have to drop big money into mine. Any opinions are appreciated.

 

[frogfarmer]

Given the price of a new unit that you may or may not like I would keep the existing unit and spend some money on repairs as they come up. By the number of hours on the machine I am guessing it is not used daily so down time might not be a big problem. 750 to 1000 dollars a month goes a long way toward repairs. We run our skids to the 4000 hour mark and then replace. We ran several lx565s and ls160s to the 4000 hour range without any major repairs. We did replace alot of bushings and pins along with the ocasional hose.

 

[bullit340]

frogfarmer, thanks for the info

No it does not get used every day but it gets used in spurts. I can deal with downtime, just not when its 20 deg out and there is a foot of snow falling. Thats when they break so I just try to prepare for the worst. Bushings, pins and hoses I can deal with. Its funny sometimes the older stuff with the most time on it is more reliable than the new stuff.