We live on a small hobby farm and have used a Deere 318 with a Little Buck loader bucket for cleaning alpaca barn stalls and other various tasks. The 318 was a great tool when we needed to blow snow, till dirt, mow grass, etc. But we no longer need to till, and we have an actual lawnmower, and we never really clear snow anyways (we just drive over it).
So that left the Deere's only job to move stuff with the bucket, which was better than pitchforking, but still not a great tool for the job.
After looking at 310s, 371s, and a 610 or two, I came across this Erickson LM4D. My first thought was "no parts availability, no service availability, no thanks". But as I learned more and thought about it more, I came to believe that the simplicity of the machine offsets some of my hesitation.
The machine, which is pretty much the same thing as a Ford CL20, is basically an air cooled 25HP Onan NHC engine spinning a tandem bank of 3 hyd pumps- one for left wheels, one for right wheels, one for bucket lift and bucket tilt. To my eyes, the tunnel of the Erickson looks like a log splitter compared to the swiss watch in a bobcat 610 tunnel. It's in decent shape, newish tires, came with a couple of buckets, and the seller let me use his trailer to get it home, so I bought it today.
Anyways, just wanted to say hi, so our first interaction here is not just a plea for help (that will come in time I am sure). Oh also, in my research and deliberation on this purchase, when thinking about the parts availability, or lack thereof, it seemed like most of the hyd stuff was pretty generic and should be easyish to fix/replace if needed, but that left me wondering about stuff like axles. My searches brought me to this forum where I found a post comment from years ago that mentioned a machine shop that "might" be able to help. I called that shop today and sure enough, they have plenty of axels for this machine should I need one- and from other posts, it sounds like that is not a terribly uncommon issue with these machines.
Alright, sorry for the dear diary intro.
This post was edited by joeymf on 06/11/2022 at 05:54 pm.
So that left the Deere's only job to move stuff with the bucket, which was better than pitchforking, but still not a great tool for the job.
After looking at 310s, 371s, and a 610 or two, I came across this Erickson LM4D. My first thought was "no parts availability, no service availability, no thanks". But as I learned more and thought about it more, I came to believe that the simplicity of the machine offsets some of my hesitation.
The machine, which is pretty much the same thing as a Ford CL20, is basically an air cooled 25HP Onan NHC engine spinning a tandem bank of 3 hyd pumps- one for left wheels, one for right wheels, one for bucket lift and bucket tilt. To my eyes, the tunnel of the Erickson looks like a log splitter compared to the swiss watch in a bobcat 610 tunnel. It's in decent shape, newish tires, came with a couple of buckets, and the seller let me use his trailer to get it home, so I bought it today.
Anyways, just wanted to say hi, so our first interaction here is not just a plea for help (that will come in time I am sure). Oh also, in my research and deliberation on this purchase, when thinking about the parts availability, or lack thereof, it seemed like most of the hyd stuff was pretty generic and should be easyish to fix/replace if needed, but that left me wondering about stuff like axles. My searches brought me to this forum where I found a post comment from years ago that mentioned a machine shop that "might" be able to help. I called that shop today and sure enough, they have plenty of axels for this machine should I need one- and from other posts, it sounds like that is not a terribly uncommon issue with these machines.
Alright, sorry for the dear diary intro.
This post was edited by joeymf on 06/11/2022 at 05:54 pm.
