Avant loader life expectancy?

[Tom at Heartwood]

I'm looking out for a decent used Avant loader and I think that the 750 looks suited to my needs but have only tried a 635 so far.

 

Going through all the various ads and talking with dealers over the months I've been trying to get an idea of market prices and typical depreciation per hour's use and guess that it works out at about £3 - £4 per hour. I know that there are different ways of working out depreciation but an average per hour is handy for working out operating cost.

 

Even though the number of machines in the UK appears to be steadily increasing there are few around with high hours. I would be interested to know what sort of life expectancy they have and what needs fixing or replacing after, say, 3000 or 5000 hours use and so on.

 

Some of the longer established hydrostatic loaders, such as Kramer Allrad that have been around for over 20 years, have clocked up high hours (8000 - 10,000) but will an Avant or Multione have the same life ahead of it if looked after?

 

I would be glad to hear your thoughts and experiences.

 

Cheers,

 

Tom.

[dumper]

I have driven a avant with over 3000 hrs good use ex hire machine, was very tired and in need of a lot of work to bring it back to a reasonable std ,I have a 520 with 2100 hrs on clock engine is good, hydraulics require adjusting,bearings need replacing in arms and centre pivot I am on third seat and second coat of paint and shortly will need fourth set of tyres, have looked at a new machine but for less than a thousand I can fix it up and get hopefully another 1000 to 1500 hrs

[RichardT]

They're not built as heavily as Weidemanns, etc.

 

The plastic bodywork on CSFs is frankly rubbish, components and fabrication is OK. The forward steering pivot point on mine failed messily at c800hrs (it's welded directly onto the hyd tank) but was a cheapish fix, and that was down to abusive use as a snowplough on rough tracks for three successive hard winters. Otherwise pretty robust.

 

Older Kramers had mechanical transmission, no?

[Jay]

All depends how it is maintained our 520+ has just clocked 1000hrs and is still running as good as new. It is greased probably to often and we recently changed the bushed and pins in the boom and headstock. It's also stored inside over night and is washed and even gets a bit of polished fairly regularly. I wouldn't expect to lose to much on it in the 3 years we have had it.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Arbtalk

[kimtree]

not sure about Avant but my schaffer has done nearly 2000 hours in 6 years and is still going strong

have changed to a new set of tyres recently and have replaced the seat once