Looking at a 40XT

Hello All, I am looing at a 2003 case 40XT with 1200 hours to do some general acerage work like move snow, dig some holes and pile some brush. I have noticed some posts on the net about drive motors leaking is this a big issue with all the 40 xts should I be concerned about this on a farmer owned machine ? Should I shy away from the 40 and go with a 60 ? I prefer the smaller machine just for loading and transporting. What I should look for when inspecting it?

They have been known to leak, i just don't know how bad, it may just be a slight leak that won't matter. It won't happen on all of them and i think they would have gotten it sorted out on later model machines, or i'd hope they did.

Might be too late to help you but during the XT production they came out with a new wheel motor that was supposed to fix the problem. I forget the details but on the early ones the motor would loose the bearing preload and take out the seals. From what I could find out the early models with the serial number starting with JAF had the problem motors and when the solved that they went to serial numbers starting with JAF0. We bought a late 70XT 14 months ago that had 4,000 hours and we've put 350 hours on it with zero problems. The 40,60 and 70XT all use the same chassis.