Buying Advice Anybody have any experience with a Bobcat T770 or T870 yet?

[masalser]

I'm looking at replacing an ASV RC100 and am contemplating going with either a Bobcat T770 or a Terex PT100G. I would also consider the Bobcat T870, but am not sure I want a machine that wide. Is anybody out there running either of the new Bobcats? If so, what are your thoughts on the machine and what are you using it for?

In terms of how we use the machine, we are a large horse farm in the Pacific Northwest, so we deal with a lot of mud and fairly soft ground. We use the current machine to move dirt and gravel around, to mow horseback riding trails with both a sickle bar mower that mows the sides and a heavy duty Davcon rotary mower that mulches up anything in the path, to move large heavy horse jumps around out in a big field, and finally as a forklift to move lumber and logs around (we have a Woodmizer sawmill). I'm used to the high speed of the RC100 (about 11mph) and won't consider any machine significantly slower than that, and I need high lifting capacity because we occasionally need to move Ecoblocks, large logs, and boulders around.

Let me know if you have any thoughts.

 

[Backwoods Field Services]

go look in the land clearing are on the main forum page there is a guy who ran an 870 and a pt100g with mulching head made a great review!

 

[masalser]

I agree - Fishfactors reviews of the two machines were extremely useful. I'm just trying to find out if anyone has experience using the machines for things other than land clearing. Land clearing is a fairly specific task that requires a ton of horsepower being transferred to the implement. I'm less concerned about that and more interested in just general feel of the machines. I drove a T770 last week and it felt like the machine was much more tippy front-to-back than the RC100 that I am used to. Granted I only had a fairly light bucket on the machine. I assume the difference was due more to the shorter track base than to the suspension system (it was a suspended version of the T770). I'm excited about the increased lift height for the T770, but a bit leery of the increased width of the machine because it means I will have to replace my 4-in-1 bucket with a wider one, and it may make using my brush cutting deck more difficult due to not being able to cut right to the edge of the tracks (I've thought about modifying the placement of the quickattach plate in order to move the deck so that it cuts even with the track on one side and may do that if I buy the T770).

Any thoughts on either machine would be greatly appreciated.

 

[BECTON]

Masalser, we prurchased the new T870 recently. i also use it for mulching mostly. we also use it very rarely on our other jobsites to backfill foundations, carry pallets of shingles,etc. TONS OF POWER! the width of the machine has not been that bigga deal for us. there is a lot of junk in the truck if ya know what i mean. (with the new cab forward design, there is a lot of machine left back there) and that hasnt been that bigga deal either, just have to get used to it a little if you've ran the older style much before. it lifts higher than any other CTL out there (12' - good for stacking hay on deck over trailers). i tried the cat, and jd. but again, my main concern was mulching and the bobcat by far out performed them in an extensive demo. also tried the ASV but chose not to go down that road for lots of mixed emotions from different. but i do know, if you are not mulching and mainly using it on your horse farm, you dont want a ASV anyway.

 

[masalser]

Becton,

thanks for the review of your T870. I ended up throwing $4500 at my ASV machine to replace all of the bogie wheel axles. They were all completely trashed. My tracks are still good enough that I should be able to get another 400-500 hours out of them. At the rate I use my machine, that should give me another 3-4 years of use, and I hope by then there are significantly better machines out there. With the attachments that I had, switching to a machine the wide of the T870 was going to require a lot of modification or replacement of implements, so I decided not to do it, and I just couldn't bring myself to buy another ASV/Terex machine after feeling like the dealer support just wasn't there.