![]() ![]() I have spent many happy hours on Cat D9G's and H's with similar 'feel' but this little D5B is at least right up there with 'em in that department. It has the sweetest balance of any small dozer that I have ever operated and is very controllable as well. It has a Cat bull tilt blade, a non-factory 2-shank ripper that is about 25-30% heavier than the genuine Cat ripper and an almost ROPS with scrub sweeps. What you describe in your first paragraph is about word for word what I find with the Cat D5B 44X series wide guage dozer that I currently spend most of my time on. LOLĮnough ramblin',I know I come on strong for the JD but they sell a lot of them here,I would not be surprised that in the weight class we are talking about they might be the market leader here so I have a lot of company it appears. We have quite a few of them here as well and the older ones were a bad joke,the newer ones appear to have been built offshore and they are not too bad.I tell him if he ran a John Deere the first thing he would do with it would be to dig a hole to bury the Case in. I chat with another gentleman in Australia who has some of his own equipment (a D8,a JD self propelled scraper etc.) although he is a farmer primarily and he tells me that Case is popular there for the smaller dozers. ![]() I have heard that Liebherr makes the larger dozers for them but if you can find an Hyundai H70 or H80 locally that would be pretty close to what we have here although the Hyundai uses the 3.9 Cummins in the adds I have seen it is possible that the JD engine might be a little more powerful. I remember in the fairly recent past that my searches for used equipment on the net have produced a couple of hits of Hyundai dozers and it appears that they build the smaller John Deeres as they are just about identical to the 450/650 that John Deere sells on their lot,at least the ones from the late '90s on are a pretty close copy. Hi Deas,I wish I could send you one so you could share the joy that we feel when you are in tune with your steed and all is well with the world.I have said many times that their dozers challange you to be your best,they say to you.show me your stuff.Ask of me something that I cannot do and you smile.You know the feeling and it is the old timers that can appreciate what I am saying now,the old guys that grew up with the rough edges and kind of took it all in stride,we are the ones that smile the loudest because we are the ones that gained the most. Wanna mail me one over for a trial run? If I like it, I get to keep it? But that hasn't translated into anything heavier. You can see a bit of JD stuff around golf courses and such like here and there are a fair number of JD ride-on lawn mowers around too. I suspect that the local distributor might have a bit to answer for too. Again, I don't think that the machines are entirely to blame for this. I know of only about 3 contractors around the immediate area who are using Case machines - all one machine owner-operators and all small track loaders up to a 1450 Case - and NOT ONE JD dozer or track loader. However, due to that lack of exposure that you mentioned, I'd guess that I'm not likely to get the chance to remedy my ignorance. I have operated a couple of JD backhoes even further back for brief periods and didn't mind them either. As I mentioned above, I liked the 850 dozer and 750 loader when I operated them all those years ago. ![]()
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