The ten minutes before you sign: inspecting a used machine
You will not strip a machine in a yard visit. You can still find most of what matters.
We sell inspected used units, so read this knowing where it comes from. It is also what we would do if we were standing in someone else's yard, and we think you should do it in ours.
Walk it cold
Ask to see the machine before it has been started. A cold start tells you things a warm one hides: how it cranks, what colour the first smoke is, whether anything knocks before the oil is up. A machine that is already running when you arrive is a machine you are seeing at its best.
The walk-around, in order
- Look underneath firstDrips tell the truth. A clean machine over a stained pad has been washed, not fixed.
- Read the plate and the meterSerial, model, hours. Then ask whether the meter has ever been replaced, and what the answer is in writing.
- Check the wear pointsPins and bushings. Slop in a linkage is hours of work you have just inherited. Rock the bucket and watch the joints, do not just look at them.
- Undercarriage or tyresOn a tracked machine this is a large fraction of the machine's remaining value. Uneven wear means something is misaligned, and it will eat the new set too.
- Cylinders and hosesScored rods and weeping seals. Look at the rams at full extension, which is where the damage lives.
- Then start itCold. Listen before you look at the gauges.
Then make it work
A static machine passes almost any inspection. Put it under load. Curl the bucket against the ground and hold it. Lift something. Watch whether a cylinder drifts down when you leave it holding. Drift is a seal, and seals are rarely alone.
Drive it. Both directions, full lock both ways. Steering and drive faults show up in the turns, not in a straight line across a yard.
The questions that do more than the walk-around
- What did it do for a living? A machine that loaded rock has had a harder life than one that moved topsoil, at the same hours.
- Who serviced it, and is there a record?
- Is anything on it not original?
- Why is it being sold? The answer is often ordinary. Occasionally it is the most useful thing you hear.
What "inspected" should mean
Inspected should mean somebody wrote it down. If a yard tells you a machine is inspected and cannot show you what was checked and what was found, that word is doing no work.
We list hours on every unit that has them, and we send the plate photo on request. Ask us for the condition notes before you drive out.
