953C pivot bar seal

nicky 68a said: Well,I see your point as it’s 22 years old. If you were only running it on occasion,it may well last you another few years with some grease slapped on so to speak. As for the cost to repair it further down the road,you may have long since finished your tip and have no use for it and simply sell it on through auction. Click to expand... I am the primary operator and the machine has spent the last 6 years at our inert fill dump. It has racked up maybe 200 hours over that time. We found the leak when we swapped the D5 for it at the dump and brought the 953 to the yard for some TLC. Plan on keeping the machine if nothing more than I have an affection for track loaders and I bought it new. It's been a slow start to Q1 of 2026 so not wanting to rack up a huge repair bill on a support machine at the moment. If it needs a new shaft, which it probably will, probably looking at a $10-15K repair bill because we'll do both sides if we do one. I don't mind investing that in the machine since it has a basically new undercarriage on it and I have at least 10 more years of work for it. We aren't a heavy equipment repair business, we make our money moving dirt so the repair will be farmed out.

Sometimes it's just better to let someone with experience do the repair.