This was the third machine purchase at the farm. May or may not predate my arrival.
Not shown is the reason for the purchase... The backhoe that mounts on the back. Same basic design as our D-100 hoes, just a whole lot bigger. Mounting system is also basically identical, just a lot heavier. This is why I didn't blink an eye dropping the hoe on my first 646 a bunch of times. The unit doesn't really fit in the barn with the hoe, so unfortunately, the hoe has sat out in the woodline for most of our ownership. It was always reliable, if extremely sloppy, and we have done a ton of work with it. 2 Septic systems, a couple french drains, 1000 gal fuel tank, all the utility trenching, irrigation lines, trees, rocks, you name it. Eastern Pennsylvania is nothing but rocks, and clay. We're not talking about gravel, I mean rocks you can't move by hand. Ice Age dragged this shit down from up north, along with ripping up the Appalachians, and dropped it here. Any machine that can survive this, deserves some respect... Last time we had it on 3 or so years ago, the curl cylinder went completely in to bypass. Worse than that headache, is the rotary cylinder is in bypass, and there are no rebuild kits available. Every hose needs to be done, and if I was going that far, I'd want to put a new valve stack on it. It's got rust through on the lower frame cross member as well. By the time I put enough money in to the hoe to make it serviceable again, I could buy a much newer machine that was just sloppy, but not thrashed.
The front end though is still in pretty good shape. Because we had the JD 300, and that's a far more pleasant machine to operate, this has had an easy life with us. We rebuilt the hydraulic system when we got it, so that's still in good shape. Also completely redid the power steering, and that is the nicest steering on any of our machines. It has a transmission PTO, so it used to pull our potato digger, as our 8N didn't really have the right gear set for that operation in our soil. Has a Continental 4 cyl engine that is so damn reliable it boggles my mind. It gave me some fits last fall, so I just left it until last weekend. Pulled the distributer cap, and brushed a little corrosion off the rotor, and then ran a file between the points. Fired right up after that. Charging system is out unfortunately. I've fought with that too much at this point. I think I'll be converting over to an alternator at some point to get a little more reliability , and charge at lower RPM. I also need to come up with some kind of counterweight for the back, as it's a pig on skates with the big flotation tires, and no weight. With the hoe, it's fine, but well, that isn't likely any more... Loader works nicely. If I plan on using it much, I'd have to take a look at all the lines, but it lives in the barn, so UV hasn't really had its way with the rubber. Last time I used it was a couple years ago to move the ballasted tires for the JD 300 when we replaced them. Please excuse the bloody JD ag yellow rears. My uncle has an issue with that damn color....