| I looked into buying a Big Bud in 2000 to pull an airdrill. I only needed 350HP, and the smaller model 20 year old Big Buds were competitive in price to 10 year old JD and CaseIH 4wd tractors. I decided against the Bud because they didn't have the hydraulic pump capacity to run the fan on an airdrill, and even at that time parts were getting expensive and hard to get. I can't remember what engines you could get in the smaller ones, could have been Cummins 855, Cat 3406 or a Detroit 2 stroke of some kind, so parts for those are still easy to get, but when you move up to the Cummins KTA1150, engine parts get hard to find and very expensive. I also recall talking to someone in Havre that said one was tore down in a shop and sat for 6 months waiting on a part for transmission (made by Twin Disc I believe). That was a deal killer for me. I think owning one as a collector would be fine, and putting 100 or so hours on it in the fall would be fun, and if it goes down, no big deal if it is just to play around with and not the primary tractor. |