New holland ls 180 skidsteere

To late now, but my brother just bought a 06 NH 180
skidsteere. Had 360 hours on it. I thought I'd ask if they are a
pretty good machine, what to watch on them ect. A woman I
work for has a ls160, seems pretty good, but I only used it a
few times. Thanks for any info. As I said he bought it than
told me!

Never owned one but rented one a number of time

Nice powerful easy to use machine with a nice ride

have one here. it gets used hard-in mud, manure, etc. so we find the weak spots on things. the lower pivot pins on the bucket mounting plate are a bad design. they are special tapered pins that are held in to a match tapered socket on each side. any wear in there and they'll never stay tight or straight, and once they get loose they wear the bushings unevenly. it should have been a standard clevis set-up.

also eats wheel bearings/seals. not sure which caused which to fail. the inner bearing is splash lubed by the 80/90 in the chain case; the outer bearing (same bearing) is lubed by the grease gun via a zerk that you can't get at without removing the wheel.

they do make a heavy-duty J type seal that we've got on there now; we'll see if that holds up.

compare that to the L785 we used to have where that whole final drive mechanism is lubed with hyd oil which is constantly filtered. never had any problem with those bearings.

i'm also not crazy about the modern electronics- sensors, solenoids, computer, etc. but i doubt anyone makes a skid steer nowadays without all that.

other than a few poorly engineered components/features, it's a pretty darn handy machine.

L785 is probably one of the best skidsteers NH ever made. The LS180 is a good machine,but hard to match an L785.