Backintheday, I am a little mystified as to why the boom ram is bending. That ought to be very difficult to bend by way of operator misuse. I do think bending bucket rams is often induced by the operator as I mentioned, even though it is hard for me to blame an operator for it. These things are made to dig, and if they are only good in soft soil, then why have one. I guess what needs to be considered is the dynamics that are happening to cause it. Generally rams on smaller backhoes bend when the valve spool is centered (closed) on that particular ram and that ram is fully or nearly fully extended, then a great amount of force is applied to the ram by either another cylinder in the system or by tractor motion relative to the ground, or something like that. These sort of things are kind of fun to figure out, except for the $$ and downtime. No fun in that. With your soil/rock conditions, you probably do need a commercial machine to dig with any speed. Keep the Branson as a tractor/loader, and buy an older full size rig and use it for the backhoe part only.
Nice of you to still say good things about your dealer and your tractor. You sound like a pretty good guy. We have sold a ton of tractors, and every few years we get a tractor that causes us grief. Generally it is a combination of a legitimate problem or two and a rookie operator (not meaning you) and it seems that the sky is falling for a few days. But if both the owner and the dealer keep their cool and do not point fingers or jump to conclusions (like abuse) and treat each other respectfully, things get solved and neither the customer nor the dealer regret the relationship.
