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jdemaris
06-30-2006 05:43:27
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350 is a great little crawler - but the key words are "little" and "crawler", it's not meant to be used as a big jackhammer. The 1010 crawler was a pretty good little machine also - when used right. When I first worked at a Deere dealership in New Jersey - back in the 60s - I don't recall ever seeing a 350 fall apart. Most repairs were routine and expected - steering clutches, reversers and isolators, rollers, fuel injection pumps, etc. But - that region of New Jersey is sand and clay with very little hard-pan. I even had to service a few 350s that were roof-top mounted on skyscrapers in New York City. The second Deere dealership I worked at was in a "black dirt" area of lower New York State - mostly lettuce and onion farms. Most of the 350s were wide-track and had three-point hitches and were used for field work. They lasted forever - and are probably still going. When I went to work in central New York State - I saw many 350s literally torn to pieces. That's not Deere's fault. We have lots of hardpan and boulders here. In many places, there's two inches of top soil and the rest is rock. When a logger needed a bunching-crawler, or a quarrier needed a crawler for opening up a shale-bank - very often the 350 was chosen over the 450 simply due to the price difference. Subsequently, 350s were often used and abused - for jobs they were not suited for. Many times I saw loggers chain the front of their 350 to a tree so they could winch up a bunch of logs - and often - something major broke. Same sort of treatment went for our rentals. The bigger the machine - the more the rental fee. So, people usually tried to get by with the smallest machine possible. I am not an expert pond digger - but it seems - in the long run - a machine that's twice as expensive but works twice as fast - is a better deal. If a person wished to buy a good used 350 crawler - they were - and are - better off finding one down state - in my area. A used 350 from this area - except for a few rare unabused machines - would almost always have cracked and rewelded side-frames, loose mounts between the trans. and reverser, cracked and/or stripped steering clutch housings and final drives, track frames that are hammered to death where they mount to the crossbar, etc. The last place I worked, my boss decided to avoid the "fast buck" selling 350s, and worked harder to convince certain users to buy 450s (or larger) instead. Most of our customers that were hard users - i.e. loggers, quarriers, pond diggers - who made the change claimed later that the 450 was more than twice the machine the 350 was - if you take into account not only the work it can do, but how long it holds together.
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