Looking at buying a 460. I've herd guys say its a bad machine. Electronic cummins drinks fuel. Hard to work on totally different than a 450. Anyone here have one what are your thoughts.I know there cheap to buy and plenty out there for sale. That makes me think the guys I herd are right.
I know they have an electric shifter which didn't fair well in the open cab models. And was really pricey to replace, and that was before deere was hawking the parts. 450 is last of true TJ's cummins,eaton, clark parts.
They arent too bad on fuel depending on the application. We run a dual arch grapple and it can go threw 80 gal. in a 10 hr. day but there is a lot of wood moved in that time. The cable machines are better about 25 gal. in a 10 hr. day but those machines are idleing a lot more.
The biggest issue with them are the eletronics. you can go crazy trying to find shorts and broken wires in a wireing harness the size of a base ball bat. the hyd pumps on the grapples are also known to be crappy expect a rebuild about every 3500 hrs.
as a whole they are a solid machine our grapple has over 15,000hrs on it and still runs every day and the cable machines all have over 7,000hrs and are working daily
Thanks for your input. I'm going to look at a 98 515 cat factory cable machine. Tomorrow. In the price range as the 60 series jacks that were grapples. I would be converting to cable. I haven't seen many factory cable 60 series.
Not to many of the 60 series being run around hrer any more. I hated to see them fade away, as an independent mechanic, I made a nice living off them for many years. One in fifty would just run and run. The rest well... Two sayings attributed to them around here. "They are just the opposite of a race care, you work on the all weekend to race them during the week." "To make production you need 3 of them, one pulling wood, one in the shop, and one on the low boy headed to the shop ( That has been used on the Franks as well). That being said they are productive and in my opinion simple to repair. I have also had people say that logging equipment in the south gets more abuse than in other parts of the country. If you get one I have the complete factory service manual. Many parts are available aftermarket including the shifter mentioned above, at least they were last time I needed one.
Funny you should mention the southern machines. The ones ive been looking at have been from the south.
I have a 460 and I'm liking it more and more. I have found if I don't run it wide open it's WAY better on fuel consumption. It is super strong and fast,compared to anything else I've ever had.