Dad ran one along with a P&H
I tried to learn at 14 yrs old- those pedals are not meant to stomp on!
Like Pete said -- easy does it.

The operator I was with told me he was going to take my shoes off and heat the pedals with torch, make me less prone to stomping them.
He ran his brakes very loose, just enough to hold an empty bucket.
Swing is tricky to learn, keep the bucket under the boom. Easy to have the boom ahead or behind the load.

As someone said here -- make sure the clutches are not engaged and drawing the cables when you start it - more than one has crumpled a boom, or wrinkled the house by pulling boom over it.

Bucyrus draw works run in oil, a great advantage and they clutches were all manual connected, P&H used brake master cylinders on the levers and slaves on the clutches, always leaking!

Loading the flat track can be a bit tricky, Dad used to throw some pea gravel on the ramps, helped keep it from slipping, days long before the nice Cozad trailers.

Good Luck!

looks like a pretty straight machine to me. check the boom for twist and cracks but that is an easy fix. check the swing pinion and bull swing gear under the house to make sure it doesn't have a stripped section so the house can't swing. if the swing pinion is wore out but the big gear on the carbody is ok then it can be fixed pretty easy. just about any machine shop can make parts and there are a lot of 15b in salvage too. it is a friction machine so soak all of the sliding collars with atf mixed with acetone before you start it and make sure all of the levers will operate easy. does it have a decent fairlead and drag bucket? running draglines was always my favorite and i still have a koehring 304 that i still run from time to time. my favorite was linkbelt ls78 pipeliner. loading dump trucks was very fun too

Hi, CaptainHowdy.
Funny that you should mention the Link Belt LS78. I operated both LS78 and LS98 models as cranes, draglines and clamshells, VERY nice machines to operate. The 98 was the first crane that I operated, other than sidebooms, that was rated to lift more than its own fully rigged weight - fully rigged weight with 70 feet of stick - 48 tons - max lift at 10 feet - 50 tons.

Just my 0.02..

go inspect it , take a big screwdriver with you and see how much stuck, if it looks like it might come free easy and the motor rolls over by hand, BUY IT and then make it run , or the price will go up if you start it first.

I looked at the machine this past weekend. Its about a 4 hr drive away, I should have asked questions first then went and viewed it so I knew what I was looking for. It last run about 3 years ago according to the owner. He purchased and never used it other than walking it across a field about a half mile to where it sits now. My first concern is to make sure the engine is free. The machine is sitting on a slight hill causing the exhaust to be slightly tilted up.

Can someone look at the picture and tell me if that bell/cone shaped piece on the roof around the exhaust pipe is a rain trap of any sorts? If I were to make a deal I would need for the owner to turn the engine for me. What would be the easiest way to do that on this machine? I kinda wish I would have spent a little more time looking it over when I was there.

looks like the top of a muffler to me. can't see any muffler though from the pics of the inside. i would estimate about a 25% chance of engine damage at most. is the pipe pointed into or out of the prevailing wind? where does the pony muffler terminate? inside the house? does it come with a story? was it a county or municipal machine?

"captainhowdy" wrote:

looks like the top of a muffler to me. can't see any muffler though from the pics of the inside. i would estimate about a 25% chance of engine damage at most. is the pipe pointed into or out of the prevailing wind? where does the pony muffler terminate? inside the house? does it come with a story? was it a county or municipal machine?

The current owner purchased about 5 years ago from the wife of a gentleman who passed away. I asked about the history and the current owner really didn't know anything. Kinda too bad as I always enjoy hearing where these old machines came from.

The main exhaust and pony exhaust both exit out the roof of the house and both hand a horizontal 90 on them.

"seyser" wrote:

I looked at the machine this past weekend. Its about a 4 hr drive away, I should have asked questions first then went and viewed it so I knew what I was looking for. It last run about 3 years ago according to the owner. He purchased and never used it other than walking it across a field about a half mile to where it sits now. My first concern is to make sure the engine is free. The machine is sitting on a slight hill causing the exhaust to be slightly tilted up.

Can someone look at the picture and tell me if that bell/cone shaped piece on the roof around the exhaust pipe is a rain trap of any sorts? If I were to make a deal I would need for the owner to turn the engine for me. What would be the easiest way to do that on this machine? I kinda wish I would have spent a little more time looking it over when I was there.

Is that 4 hours to the NE. I could be convinced to look at it.