Pisten Bully 400 service and operations

[ArlyA]

The Bombi was a specific model made by Bombardier. Here is a photos of one. Are you sure that's what you had???

Our snowmobile club had a Bombi BR180 for trail grooming for several years. Maintenance and some pretty high depreciation on these specialty trail grooming vehicle caused us to go in a different direction. We purchased a new 150 hp Case IH tractor and installed Soucy tracks. The cost was comparable to that of the larger specialized groomers like new Tucker Sno-Cat or Pisten Bully. The advantage we saw was that we purchased a new tractor with a warranty and service that could be done by our local dealer. The dealer was also a Soucy dealer so there was experience with these types of tracks on tractors and combines.

So we purchased a tractor that could be sold with about 500 hours and would have its new tires as they were never used. Low hour tractors hold their resale value so well that we found the cost per hour for the equipment was lower than for the specialized equipment.

Now, there is an issue with weight and when they get stuck, and they do, they are a bit of challenge to "unstuck" them. And on some of our hills, when icy, we can struggle. We are looking into some ice studs for the tracks but no final decision has been made.

In SE Minnesota are snow depth levels are much, much less than that in the UP of Michigan so the tractor/track program may indeed not work there. But for our use, with a much more moderate snow base, we are quite happy with the results. In fact, we were so happy that we added a John Deere with tracks to our trail grooming arsenal about 3 years ago.

 

[eagle628]

They need to work hard at high elevations and the push snow while dragging snow.

I saw someone stall out a PB600 pushing snow. There is definitely no such thing as too much power.

 

[groundcover]

Snow really got to that cutting edge ! How many hours on that rig ?

 

[ArlyA]

I now see I answered the wrong qestion. Sorry about that... I'm new at this place, but to the best of my limited knowledge, these machines have had grief with there torsion suspension. I'll check tomorrow how many hours are on this particular machine.

How much/how often do you need to do similar to the current machines you are running?

 

[jonsstihl]

our front blades had a plastic liner to keep the wet spring snow from sticking.

cool pics those are definitely well worn. how many hours on the machines.


during the ski season. our machines ran a lot in one day. day shift ran them from 10:30am to around 10:00pm then night shift ran them from 11:00pm to around 7 or 8 in the morning.

do they have DEF and all that emissions good stuff.

 

[jonsstihl]

here is what I think he meant basically a br275's little brother

 

[jonsstihl]

Bombardier sold their recreational vehicle division to Camoplast then camoplast sold to Prinoth. I dont remember exactly what years we had prinoth br350's in 2007 so it was a while ago.

 

[jonsstihl]

whatever you do do not break the front glass, it is expensive and if you look closely has hundreds of tiny defroster lines in it. we had an operator put a functioning snow cannon through one once. what a surprise.

he was supposed to help move the snow cannon around with the machine but the snow maker forgot to turn off the cannon but had it lowered so the machine operator ran into it.

 

[ArlyA]

The 2 machines in the shop now both have 8000+- hours on them. Seems the one is getting its blade cutting edge refurbished for the 1st time. For those who might not know, all glass in these machines is electrically heated and that includes the RV mirrors. Windshields have been broken in them. Later I'll post a few photos taken today.

 

[ArlyA]

We have 2 or 3 machines in the fleet that run that DEF chemical in them.

our front blades had a plastic liner to keep the wet spring snow from sticking.
cool pics those are definitely well worn. how many hours on the machines.
during the ski season. our machines ran a lot in one day. day shift ran them from 10:30am to around 10:00pm then night shift ran them from 11:00pm to around 7 or 8 in the morning.
do they have DEF and all that emissions good stuff.