The Cheap Chinese Loader-2 years later...

we've had our ups and downs with this machine we originally bought it for one thing and one thing only and that's snowplowing brand new out of the box and cost us 64 grand we're going to talk about whether that machine was worth it or not the sledge is as simple as it comes it's kind of an old-school machine it's got a mechanical part kubrick a mechanical shifter it has zero bells and whistles which is the way I like it but that's not for everybody but of course you're also not paying for those bells and whistles you're getting the most basic of services and you're getting some quality materials in it like a dude's engine but there's a lot of other things that could be improved on this piece of equipment [Applause] now we went with a 980 nefler the compact wheel loader because it comes in at 74 horsepower with one horsepower under depth regulation which is one less thing we've got to worry about or snow it's one of our favorite pieces of equipment but I can't necessarily say the same thing if we were doing a lot of dirt work when I say simple and I say old-school it just doesn't get much simpler than this machine it's only got forward and reversed a high gear and a low gear and that simplicity doesn't lend itself to high productivity especially in dirt if you've got a load trailers or trucks it's time and time again you're gonna find yourself a little bit frustrating another area that some of you guys might find frustrating is the guys that need to rode their machines or literally drive them down the roads from one job site to the next with just a high gear and a low gear it doesn't give you very many speed options and part of the problem is is when you put this machine in high gear it doesn't have any power to actually deliver on that high gear if you have to climb a hill in high gear plan on down shifting into low gear it's that bad as long as you're on flat level ground or better yet if you can somehow have all of your jobs be downhill you're gonna be fine though [Music] pushing snow in my opinion is relatively easy as a workload it's a harsh environment but it's not tough work and that's where this machine excels we've been able to put on a 17-foot pusher and keep up with much bigger payloads so it's not the size of the dog in the fight it's the size of the fight in the dog and when it comes to snow this pay loader does deliver in that neck of the woods the stock tires that come with it though are really not meant for snow removal there is more of a dirt trap and so if you've got slippery icy conditions you may need to upgrade those with three cuts there's no crack [Applause] but that's not my only frustration with this machine fact there's a bigger pet peeve than that by far we've definitely had our ups and downs with this thing and maintenance is one of them but I don't want to just talk about it let's show you when we first got the sledge it kept blowin fuses on the heater fan we called out a service technician to take a look at it and he ended up handing us a handful of brand-new fuses and said well if it blows another one here you go just stick one of these in now that's not the answer you want to hear and I said well you know we want a better permanent solution and the guy said well if the schematics weren't all in Chinese I'd be able to do a better job [Music] so after about the third service call we finally got the heater core repaired by I guess the service tech that knew how to speak Chinese I don't know he figured it out and we haven't had too many other issues we have had row hoses rattle loose we have lost coolant on it but those are some things that I think could happen to any piece of brand-new equipment that lack of power that we were talking about earlier is a lot more noticeable doing dirt work than it is for snow [Music] well the machine itself has performed pretty good once you say Alex but I would say service on it is just stupid like how you service it is one thing that's no big deal but actually getting answers to service questions is it completely it's been the biggest cluster I've ever seen so right now this is a great example Alex just wanted to know a very simple question how many quarts of oil does this engine take and he called them up and said hey how many quarts of oil does it take and do you think we could get an answer what they say - yeah Alex the day-to-day routine maintenance on this machine is frustrating at best an example of what alex is trying to work on right now all we've got to do is change oil on it let's just show you what we're up against what is this thing supposed to do Alex just push it open so that the oil drain out and then I don't I just hold my I don't have to get my handily so let's take a look at this it's got this little that's what we're trying to get opened up so we'll see if your tool works my little man oh are you serious so you got to literally sit there and hold that the entire time well I think it lacks in a place but I can't get it to that's what I'm kind of thinking that you need a special tool that kind of threads onto those threads there and pushes it open and that's one of the things I don't like about the SD LG is like even to get even to get the tire to fill up with air I had to get a special adapter yeah yeah yeah we left it on so it needed a special adapter just to get the tire to fill up with air it's like why would you do that I don't get it at the end of every snowplow season we give them a real thorough bath before we park them but this year we found something weird coating our machine I don't know if you guys maybe know what this stuff is brake parts not really sure what that stuff is covering the machine and maybe it's pine sap there were some pine trees kind of close by where we parked it but we didn't have it parked underneath them so I really don't have a clue what that stuff actually is I've told other guys this if you need a machine for day-to-day dirt work you're probably not gonna be buying an SD LG you might want to stick with one of the more higher productive popular name rims but if you need something for snow plowing or yard use or farm use absolutely honestly I really love this machine I love the simplicity of it it does have its quirks but at sixty four thousand dollars brand-new in the box you can't beat the price god bless you guys go get them and I hope you guys enjoyed today's video we'll catch you on another one