Oliver 770 Pros cons

One thing to watch out for is the hydraulic pump. They are driven by a live shaft from the engine and are notorious for breaking at the drive area. The fix is a pain in the ear as the shaft has to be pulled. One thing to lookk at is the pipe connections to the bottom of the pump - these tractors were not equipped with breakaways and whan you lose a plow, the hoses were yanked out of the pump. THis very often would break the drive housing at the bottom of the pump (I personally have seen 4 tractors with this condition). A way to check for a cracked housing is to pull the trans fill plug - if the housing is cracked it will leak into the trans, the trans will be overfull, and the trans oil will be lighter tan from the 10w or reddish from the trans-hyd fluid. THe original trans lube is a heavier gear oil.

Other than that these are a heck of a machine! A 3 point conversion is about $650 complete with cylinders, and after that there's about nothing you can't do (except mow the lawn - too heavy).

Our 770 is a later model with about 40 hp. It handles the loader (Oliver 1610) better than any of our other tractors that we've put a loader on, so great hydraulics. Hydraulics and PTO are both independent. Um, weak points, hmm. We've had clutch problems for years but that might have something to do with it being a loader tractor and at least two bad clutch jobs so we decided to just go til she quit and it's been about 14 years or so and she still hasn't quit. Other than that, I can't think of any real problems with it. It has a whine in the rear end which apparently is just a quirk of the model.

Oh yeah, you have to pay extra to get the bent muffler. lol.

Jake

Most of my friends refer to me as Shep hence my use here of the same. ShepFL is ok by me and you can continue using Shep. Thanks for all I have learned from you and those "brute" Olivers you have.
Greg aka ShepFL