I own a 1989 Case 1550 dozer. It has an 8 way blade, 170 hp and weighs 40,000 pounds. Before buying it, I rented a Deere 450 G dozer for a couple of months. The Deere was somewhere around 80 hp and mostly used for building up house pads for residential jobs. It was great at spreading material and maintaining roads, but horrible at digging or clearing land. It wasn't heavy enough to break through my summer hard baked red clay soil. It also struggled with pushing piles of trees. It could move them forward, but it just spun it's tracks when trying to turn. Overall, it was huge disappointment to me, but also very educational in what not to buy.
The Case is big enough to dig in my soil, push over trees if the soil still has some moisture in it, and really get a lot done. I dug my 4.5 acre pond with it and couldn't imagine a better tool for doing that.
I would never buy Case again because they do not support their older equipment. It has three hydraulic pumps that are powered by a Cummins 8.9 six cylinder turbo engine. One of the pumps went out and Case would only sell me a new replacement pump for $25,000 plus labor if they do the work. They will not work on fixing the existing Sundstrand pump. I took out the pump and had it rebuilt for $2,700 and then put it back in myself. Deere has the same pump in there 850 dozers and they sell parts to rebuild them, but Case doesn't. For the engine rebuild, I went to NAPA for parts, but they said that they have to have the serial number for the rebuild kit. When I gave them the number, they said that it's not listed and they cannot sell me any parts for that engine. Only the dealer can supply parts for it. From what I understand, Case and Cummins have some sort of a deal about only Case being able to sell parts to the engines used in Case equipment. I also had the radiator fan come apart and destroy the shroud. Case no longer caries those parts. I got lucky and found a salvage place in Florida that had them for $1,500. I currently need to replace my sprockets, which will cost me about $2,500, but I have other things that are more important to me right now to spend $2,500 on, so that will wait for awhile.
One day, I really look forward to selling it and never owning a dozer again. It's fun for about an hour, then it becomes work. After 4 hours, it becomes painful and by the time I get off of it I'm in total pain. Only a skid steer is more painful to operate for any period of time, it's just pure torture after awhile!!!!
Tractor Supply has a good selection of large wrenches. You will need every size from 7/8's on up to 2 inches. 15/16's seems to be a very popular size for most of my hoses, but some are twice that size. I bought a kit with a bunch of different sizes, and then I've added other sizes as I've needed them. I have a pretty good collection now, and when something breaks, I grab a dozen different sizes with the hope that I only have to go back one more time to find the correct sized wrenches.
If I was buying today, I would probably only look at Cat, Deere and research the heck out of Komatsu before looking at them too. I've read that Cat has the most expensive parts, but they have every part for every machine they ever made. I've dealt with Deere and they had everything I needed, but I also thought they where obscene with their prices. I've heard that Komatsu makes Deere and Cat seem cheap in what they charge for parts, but I have no first hand knowledge of that and I would check with them before buying. Case is actually pretty fair on their prices. The cost of the engine rebuild from Case was very close to what NAPA was going to charge me if they could have sold me a rebuild kit.
I don't think you will be able to get much done with anything under 100 hp. Everything under that amount are more for finish work.
Dozers are pretty easy to work on, but everything is super heavy and expensive. If you go slowly, it's all doable and not very complicated.
