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| I am going to look at a wilmar eagle 8500 sprayer. It has right around 2000 hrs on it. I just want to know the pros and cons as well as what to look for. Thanks.
Evan |
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| The Eagle 8500 was a heavy machine for it's capacity. I heard the early units had electrical issues. They had a different but relatively smooth suspension. The ground clearance is minimal. Weren't too many running in my area. Don't know who the booms held up. |
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Illinois | The 8500 was underpowered, the planetary's were not heavy enough, poor hydro setup and with the hours getting up there on some, the wheel motors seem to be failing on some with poor availibility for replacements.
There are better machines on the market for similar money. In my opinion, I would keep looking.
They do have a very nice ride. |
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Radville, SK | We run a 1994 Gallenberg AG1000XT which is the predecessor to the 8500. It has it's weak points, but it also has some bonuses.
We wish it had better booms. We've broken them 3-4 times and it's starting to show as they're very bent. Turns out 120ft of steel is heavy! However, we paid $60,000 for it about 6 years ago and it just had a complete hydraulic system installed(we bought it for the cost of the hydraulics). It now has 4000 hours on it.
We replaced that giant, crude applicator pump with a pump we bought from John Deere. Since we've done that it's been nearly flawless.
Although, with the vintage on ours, it's getting time to either get it overhauled or spent a few hundred thousand on a new one. |
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Illinois | The 8500 only shares the cab and frame with Primer's gallenberg. Drive system is completely different as well as booms. After Willmar bought out Gallenberg, they rebadged the unit as the Eagle 8400 which was a very reliable machine. A year or 2 later willmar tried to mesh the gallenberg unit with their existing drive system and booms to lower the costs and that unit turned into the 8100 eagle which was a decent machine. Then a couple yrs later they "upgraded" the 8100 to the 8500 model mostly to increase road speed and improve the steering, which they did do, although they really screwed up by not increasing the capacity of the planetaries which failed. Also the 8500 uses dual hydros that are difficult to keep properly balanced. |
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Radville, SK | Oh...I was thought they were kept basically the same. My apologies.
But as he said, our Gallenberg is a very reliable machine. |
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Somewhereville, Earth | spent time on the 8100, it wasn't the greatest machine in the world, looked kinda crude, but it worked, and worked, it had 2000hours on it back in 2004?......i think they still have it now, i remeber we blew a hose on a final drive, broke the drive off to the product pump, use to spray 90ft at 14mph, didn't slow for flipper ditches, did 24mph on the road, looked ugly but hey it worked
from memory the 8500 was completely different, remeber or cropstores ran 8400's and 8100's even thou the 8500's were available
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wilmar eagle 8500 good/bad
