j414 You are not alone in your troubles with the 299dxhp machines. Sadly your experiences have been better then mine I have had two of the 299 and one 297 all xhp machines. 0My 2013 at one point was down for 6 months continuously that machine logged over 65000 in warranty claims in the first 1000 hours. My last two were pretty good until 5-600 hours when all **** broke lose. My 297 was recently down for over 3 months straight. My dealer put 70 hours on it during that time. Its so amazing that I can put 500 hours on a machine and keep the tracks mint and in 70 hours the dealer can grind of 20% of my tread driving the machine to the dirt pile and back to the shop for testing. Machine still is not right (stupid electronics):mur: and was just down for another week. I think cats plan to keep warranty claims down is make the machine stay down so you cant get any hours on it until the warranty has run out then the track drive motors will fail. ( I have only had 8 drive motor failures on cats four of which were on D machines)
Bobcat is no better I have a T870 it has been in for dealer repairs for 6 months minus the one week in the field before the drive motor broke an internal drive shaft. How and why I will never understand 2500 hours and my bucket still has the paint on it. We do very little pushing with the machine. Even moved machine to different dealer after drive motor failure just to get screwed by a different stealer . Got screwed on the new engine problems since day one. spent 20000 on a new engine and unnecessary rebuild of new engine and the engine still pours out blue and white smoke on startup and stays blue at it idle with intermittent light smoke puffs at high idle. both dealers claim it runs great but it it runs worse now then ever after their repairs. Spent 3000 on fixing the A/C at the dealers and the dealer claimed it worked great at their shop but funny It still doesn't work. It gets f***ing hot in Florida mulching with no A/C. I contacted the bobcat national organization several times during these ongoing issues to try and get resolution.They have not returned my last calls in months. They simply don't care and look for bs reasons to reject warranty claims no matter how legitimate. I have whiffle ball bat on stand by for use in the event I ever meet the person who designed their proprietary air filters on newer machines. NO NEW DOOSAN PRODUCTS FOR MY COMPANY AND THIS IS THE SHORT VERSION. I wonder if my lawyer could motivate them the way he claims to be capable of? :laughing::licking: seeing as normal reasonable communication cant seem to get anything done for me. FYI new engine only has 500 hours.
My2013 PT 110 logged an amazing 9 days of billable work in 3 months before being bought back by terex. Terex at the factory level was not bad but forced me to deal with a terribly shady dealer that was incompetent at best.
Rt 110 my Vermeer dealer was trying to get me interested in was a no go on price with a $25,000 premium for yellow paint and there stupid attempt to imitate a cimaf head that must of been design by their lawyers and not their engineers just wasn't for me.
The last two years have been horrible for my business. I have had half a million in new loaders in the last two years alone and still no luck to be had. It is only by the grace of god that I have not gone bankrupt in the mulching business. These OEM people and there factory endorsed stealers just don't get it and must just do not care at all about their customers. If I did business with my customers the way these equipment manufacturers do business with me I would not have any customers left. How and why god has managed to keep me in business I will never know or understand but I am grateful for that but seven long hard years of mulching is making me grey headed before my time.
I hope all of you fellow mulchers out have better experiences then me I wouldn't wish this level of frustration and hard ship on any one. To those who are on here looking to get into the business I will simply state this WHAT THE **** IS WRONG WITH YOU!!!! GO FIND AN EASIER LINE OF WORK !!! I WOULD NEVER GO INTO THIS LINE OF WORK IF I HAD IT TO DO OVER AGAIN!!
