I haven’t been able to work on my 1450 this winter at all. I fell in January and tore both quad tendons. Walking again now just fine and burning through 6 weeks of PT. Maybe back to work early June. Worst part was 5 weeks horizontal. Saw the great conversation on the 1450 in GA, what a beauty.
Now that I’ve replaced everything that goes around on my undercarriage, I look at the tracks and undercarriage on these gorgeous low hour machines with some skepticism. The engine may have 400 hours but the rest of the machine has been sitting for 38 years or 332,000 hours. A State vehicle would probably fair better but who knows.
As all the old timers here know, the tracks on the 1450 are a cobbled together mess. Heavy track belts from Sprytes and light duty grousers from Imps are what you get. Impossible bolt access sucks. The wheel guides are nice, much beefier than Imps’, but try and find any on the planet. I’m using a few Imp wheel guides on mine as it will not have to work very hard.
I removed about 350 lbs of winch junk from my front end. I’m sure the seasoned 1450ers know you’re not going to push much snow around and the extra 500-1000 lbs with a blade is just more work for the 104 hp six.
If you want a nimble light duty machine that can carry a ton the 1450 can’t be beat, especially when you figure in the grin factor. Just know that you might have a $5k to $10k track rebuild waiting no matter how shiny it is...
Here’s a picture of my new knees V2.0.