Why is buying a giant old used cheap barelyworking excavator bad?
Im getting my licence soon to operate an excavator and i would love to buy one for a hobby. I see people here use miniexcavators but they are so small and pathetic? like i can get a giant 700 volvo old (barely working) used one for the same price as a new miniexcavator
What are the downsides except
>muh fuel burn
>muh takes so much space
? should i buy the big volvo excavator?
If you can get it to your property and you have space to operate and store it, why not?
It will require maintenance that will be orders of magnitude more expensive than on a small excavator, and when something breaks, you'll be paying more than the price of the entire thing to get it fixed. Something low-mid-sized in the range of 5-10T could be manageable.
Also most of the work the average person needs to do around houses is smaller amounts of earth moved in relatively tight spaces, not large scale construction/infra projects.
I could try to fix it myself?
Not sure yet but Just rent a trucker to transport it? 2 hour drive. Cant be that much
>I could try to fix it myself?
Do you have all the massive socket wrenches and impact drivers needed to disassemble a machine that size and a compressor to run them?
Do you have a forklift (or two) to move the subassemblies and parts you need to move after disassembly, and or an overhead crane to get them onto the forklifts and/or back into position for reassembly?
Yeah, yeah, I know...you'll just rent, borrow or get that stuff used, it can't cost that much.
I have alot of sockets on 1/4 inch socketwrench. I can Just buy socket fits for it? Not that expensive
Also yes I can rent not that expensive
>I have alot of sockets on 1/4 inch socketwrench. I can Just buy socket fits for it?
At this point I have to believe that you're trolling.
No its a Long arm one
Looked online found a cheap 1/2 inch socket set with all the "big" ones for 150 dollars
Looks like your muh big sockets argument got btfo
You'll need 1" sockets not 1/2”
yeah socket argument is moronic
but some shit just breaks and then you are fricked
final drive on a big machine costs a lot
often more than you paid for the used machine
Top kek.
>At this point I have to believe that you're trolling.
Really? It took you this long to work that out?
There's probably more metal in the fastener circled in picrel than an entire typical 1/4" drive socket set
>Much expensive sockets
https://www.amazon.com/Anbull-Impact-Shallow-Assortment-Standard/dp/B08927HXNT/ref=sxin_18_pa_sp_search_thematic_sspa?content-id=amzn1.sym.c25ac4ee-94be-4247-810e-5117b1303a53%3Aamzn1.sym.c25ac4ee-94be-4247-810e-5117b1303a53&cv_ct_cx=1+inch+drive+socket+set&keywords=1+inch+drive+socket+set&pd_rd_i=B08927HXNT&pd_rd_r=48bcebdd-b43e-49aa-adab-ae35f3ba3489&pd_rd_w=hirD7&pd_rd_wg=elKbA&pf_rd_p=c25ac4ee-94be-4247-810e-5117b1303a53&pf_rd_r=1DZJCYF8VEZBGYY26XQX&qid=1686765183&sr=1-1-0303db0a-48b9-486e-a134-acc9117465d0-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9zZWFyY2hfdGhlbWF0aWM&psc=1
btfo
>Surely I won't need more than a 2" socket to fix things on this, right?
Oh my sweet, sweet summer child...
again blown the frick out
https://www.amazon.com/STEELMAN-60260-14-4-Inch-6-Point-Locknut/dp/B07NDXKZ5F/ref=sr_1_2?tag=ganker-20&crid=3VV96D9J6AV50&keywords=4+inch+socket&qid=1686766793&sprefix=4+inch+socke%2Caps%2C179&sr=8-2
For perspective, that's a Class 8 truck set.
LMAO
>Good price but you get what you pay for, ratchet gears stripped out first use then 2” socket is cracked already...
***
>... what ultimately made me return it was that there were bearings and springs floating around in the case. I could see similar pieces on the ratchet and extension so they must have fell out or off of one of them.
***
>Both ratchet and breaker bar broke in under 60 seconds of use sockets seem good so far but hard to tell as I couldn't fully test them due to the crap quality of ratchets
***
>What the description did not say was that it was an incomplete set. I am missing 3 sockets and an extension. They probably fell out of the huge hole in the side of the box.
Meanwhile in thecworld of real tools, pic related.
bros i want to put all 13 inches of that into my ass no homo
Its not only the cost of the tools, parts are might expensive
Hydraulics especially
what are typical repair jobs on such machines?
I have been watching this on hydraulic piston repair. I believe that often repairs take so much work that it must be cheaper to sell broken parts for scrap value and buy new. It must be true that a factory shitting out hydraulics in a production line must use labor more wisely than some tinkerer working 3 days on a repair.
if a new part is $2500
and you have to spend a full day fixing the old one
what are you gonna do?
They rape the shit out of you on parts for these sorts of equipment
dilate
A lot of heavy equipment - especially something like in OP's image, have purpose build cylinders, not off the shelf parts. If that model and it's specific cylinders isn't being produced anymore, you have it rebuilt at a hydraulic shop. Most issues with old cylinders is seals, which is not that complicated a task. Your options are rebuild, or scavange a cylinder off a scrapped machine, or from a pile in a scrap yard.
troony
killdozer 2.0?
>700 volvo
That's a 400+hp excavator that weighs 150,000 lbs. How exactly are you going to get it to where you need it? Do you realize how much it's going to cost to even move the thing?
just borrow a cousins gooseneck, you're not a city slicker are you?
Standard max GVW is 80,000 lbs, after that you have to get a overweight permit which in my state is good to 120,000 lbs, after that you probably have to get some kind of specialized low boy and get special permissions from the state. I doubt cousin Billy's gooseneck hooked up to his 92 Chevy dually is going to cut it. I doubt the Op could afford to move the excavator let alone fill it up with 220 gallons of diesel that it requires quite often.
My dad bought a used D8 for the same reason as OP. He had to buy a semi to haul it. Not sure what I'm going to do with it in the future, maybe do a killdozer as a joke.
>d8 dozer
lmao midrange shit
why not D10 or D11? weak and pathetic
D8 cost him about 30k and it was the only thing available. Cheapest D10 is about 110k. A bigger model would have been nice, but it's overkill for what he needs.
Post yours then
Because they are ridiculously expensive to maintain. Unless you're using it to make a lot of money, owning it will just be a pit you're throwing money into.
Its old so I can Just get old parts? Cant be that expensive
Let's look at it this way. Why would the current owner/operator, which is probably a company with the resources to maintain a fleet of equipment, be getting rid of it if it were economical to maintain and use? They're ditching it because it's cheaper to buy a ridiculously expensive new one than to keep that one in operation. Sure there are some business concerns like unpredicted down time that you wouldn't care about (unless you're trying to use it to make money and have customers who expect work done in a certain amount of time) but the parts aren't cheap and large equipment is labor intensive to fix. Unless you already have experience as a heavy equipment mechanic you're in for a surprise. Why not try to own/repair/operate one of the small ones first? Then if you find you can handle it, step up.
Because the local mine got bankrupt and one lawyer handling the prosess offered it to me when I askes if they had something
Buy the mine
Probably better off to buy it and then sell it on for more.
What part of "old, cheap, barely working" did you not understand. This is not a hotbed for flipping, they sell old heavy equipment like that for basically it's scrap value. If I were to ever bid on something like that, i would limit it to the cost of hauling it to a scrapper and how much they'd pay for the metal.
>Why would the current owner/operator, which is probably a company with the resources to maintain a fleet of equipment, be getting rid of it if it were economical to maintain and use?
That's not why, companies need new equipment to show that the company is working well and also not to bother too much with maintenance, old equipment continues to be used by new companies or sent to poor countries. The company I work for sold a caterpillar 215 in almost perfect working order for 10k, the repair work was minor but the machine was too old and not very presentable.
>Cant be that expensive
do what you want. who cares?
why is this even a thread?
why is it not in the stupid questions thread?
or one of the gay generals?
what the frick is wrong with this gay board?
Do you actually have a use for that excavator or do you just think "bigger equipment == bigger penis"?
Bigger is better. Imagine how jelous people would be
Ah. So this is just a troll thread. Carry on.
No not really since i told i can get it very very cheap
That thing takes conservatively $1000 worth of just hydraulic oil and i can almost guarantee it leaks
wrong
So why does it "barely work"
It isn't, it's brilliant and you should do it. Follow your dreams, brother! I have several I store inside my shipping container bunkers where Mommy cannot find and confiscate them like she did the my piss jug collection.
do you have a license to move it around?
Plus the truck and trailer ?
are you trained on large diesel equipment and hydraulics ?
are you willing to pay ass loads of money to buy parts that aren't produced anymore?
Do you do your own welding/metal frabricating?
>loisence
ngmi
me¿?? the sweet spot is a 2.2-2.5 ton ngl
no need to compensate
calm
composed
staying in my lane
quite simply, simple as
have a nice day Black person
why would you say something like that on here
have a nice day Black person
Why when rubber tires exist
reckon for more even distribution of weight
Nerd
You have no idea what the maintenance costs are gonna be.
>Wood chipper at work blew out the plate underneath the chip drum.
>As they were working on it, they found that the drum is fricked. Wood chip has eroded a lot of the metal where the knives bolt to. The shop estimated 3-500 hours before the threads for the bolts were exposed.
>Original price for the plate repair was $2500. Now it is $12000.
And that is for something that is less than 5% of the mass of that Volvo you are lusting after.
A big part of what I do for a living is creating Whole of Life/Total Cost of Ownership models and forecasts for this kind of equipment.
The maintenance costs for this shit will absolutely blow your fricking hair back.
I'm curious, anon. Is the cost primarily parts or labor? Let's say I'm already a mechanic and can do all my own work.
Parts costs are insane. But it's not just that or labour.
If you had a slew ring failure you'd literally have to take the entire top of the excavator off the main chassis frame to replace it...and that's a normal service item that needs to be done and requires the lifting infrastructure to split the machine in half. Same goes for any other components that need the machine to be split.
Boom and tilt cylinders need constant rebuilding and eventually replacement which is in the tens of thousands of dollars a pop. Track pins every few thousand hours then entire track sets when the repining no longer works. Final driver replacements that cost more than a new car....wiring harnesses and replacing hose groups that'll send you broke.... constantly having to get worn out sockets welded and line bored.
Then ofcourse the inevitable moment when the boom gets a crack in it and you'll have to spend tens of thousands for a repair. Same goes for when the bucket cracks. Also factor in the fact that your ground engagement tools (GET) are a wear item that costs a dozen or so dollars per hour of use.
I hate being the negative type that says things can't be done...you might manage to get a unicorn machine that just keeps working effectively (and safely) without requiring a huge spend but it's doubtful. If the machine was in that condition the previous owner wouldn't be getting rid of it.
Like I said, I spend most my working day running these numbers. The costs are insane.
Wrong
But you say the machine makes more money working than these costs, right?
Be a pity havimg to do all these repairs on day 1 though
>the machine makes more money working than these costs, right?
Initially, yes. But the more hours a machine accrues, the more often it requires repairs. Eventually, the cost of constantly repairing the equipment outweighs the income that the equipment generates. And when the equipment reaches that point the company offloads the equipment and buys a new one. So if you find a company selling off an "old used cheap barelyworking excavator" it's almost guaranteed that piece of equipment is past the point of profitable operation, otherwise they'd still be using it.
I know it's a troll thread, but this. There's so many failure points on a machine like this, especially one that's in daily use in a mine or in a state motorpool. Shit just wears out, and breaks. You have the engine to deal with, the drivetrain, the hydraulics, wiring harness, treads, boom, etc.
Watch Diesel Creek on Youtube, he goes to Ritchie Bros auctions, and looks at a lot of shit that were working the fracking plants in the area, it's all rode hard and put away wet.
I'd need some serious maintenance logs and duty cycles on a something like that. And even then, for what purpose, to keep re-digging the same hole in your back yard? Just the insurance and truck and lowboy to move it makes it a pretty steep fricking hill, financially, even if it's working well enough to be used regularly (and you'll be using it daily, forever, to even hope to get some of the cash outlay back.)
Diesel Creek only buys old shit because YouTube pays for them. He really only uses his skid steer most of the time.
>I know it's a troll thread,
What are you afraid off? In other threads with a similar undertone theres always a bunch of concerned professionals angry, cussing and mocking and they never have nuance for anything. For them everything is just wrong and everyone else is an idiot, everything costs exactly 6 trillion dollars or is impossible to know since every case is different or you have to pay "huge moneys" to do some unspecified paperwork i.e insurance, licensing, therefore not worth looking into it
Nice word salad, lol.
You are afraid
Dumb frick
Why do you keep answering me, what are you trying to prove? You know everyone sees your fear behind that silly bravado?
Heres how it goes: People like you actually like troll threads, despite pretending you dont. When a thread gets serious and people start sharing practical details thats when you start dismissing everything as a troll or just say that everything is impossible in some vague way, clearly motivated by the fear of competition.
I have seen the same psychological pattern in many threads, and the gratuitous insults are not impressing anyone. Its such a silly attempt at intimidation that it has the opposite effect.
Why dont you shut the frick up before I smash your teeth in kid? Meet me lrl
>muh serious equipment
have a nice day
>Why dont you shut the frick up before I smash your teeth in kid?
See this is the internet tough guy act i was talking about.
>You are afraid
Is that you Doug? Finally bored of your houseboat, or just want to dig a quiet pond where no pesky weather would hamper your diy sailing adventures?
>Like I said, I spend most my working day running these numbers.
So it's your job to come up with numbers. Fine. I'm just an internet idiot, but I've watched Camarata use and abuse excavators of all sizes for years and your depiction is far from what he experiences.
"slew ring failure...normal service item". Sure pal.
You're comparing baby size excavators on a YouTube channel to Volvo 700.... brilliant
> baby size excavator
are you suggesting that the baby ones are more durable than the huge professional ones? And I'm not trying to say that any excavator does not involve expensive maintenance, but rather that the other guy might be overstating it a bit. OP of course seems to be making a huge mistake.
No I'm suggesting the the costs associated with baby sized excavators are many orders of magnitude cheaper than real excavators like the OP is thinking about.
Using some moronic YouTuber who plays with hobbiest grade equipment as some kind of evidence against what it costs to maintain massive industrial HME is just naive as frick
Thanks for the detailed writeup anon, you've persuaded me to get a much smaller one
Eh get a few more opinions not just mine.
Try find other people who have similar sized equipment and ask them what it's costing them.
You could also try find a component replacement intervals for the major items and then go look online for what those components may cost just to get a better idea.
Another thing, just consider the risk: reward ratio. You could be taking on a lot of a risk for very little practical reward, depending on how you actually plan to use the equipment.
I don't want to necessarily put people off their ambitions, just research a lot more and don't take too much advice from us chuds on PrepHole.
Is your goal owning a big toy or to get work done? Do you already have a large workshop that's fully equipped?
Tools before toys gets you far more toys. Wrenching is the hobby to have because it enables everything else. If you don't already have the skill and equipment to work on the big stuff acquire those and in so doing you'll vastly improve your DIY options.
>and requires the lifting infrastructure to split the machine in half.
The machine lifts itself, just remove the bolts and pull the lower half
That's cute. Now try doing that with one that's 6 times the size and weight.
Nothing changes, you do the same operations at scale
>nothing changes 😀
thats why airplanes are shaped like bumblebees. because nothing changes at size, you just scale up 😀
You dont have any actual arguments besides your negativity and snark.
An excavator isnt a airplane and the OP isnt trying to buy some epic mega machine. You are just afraid and at a loss for words
>the OP isnt trying to buy some epic mega machine
He kind of is though, look up the specs of 400 hp excavators and then you can see why the OP is a moron
Alright, show me someone doing what you posted with a fricking EC700.
>ec700 Le big
Dont know its actually Just higher midrange since ec900 is the big one
That is not the same machine as in OPs pic.
Sort of related… I was thinking buy a bulldozer, backhoe or front end loader, a dump truck and put them on a couple of acres and open a “unique experience school” or some shit like that. Charge tourists a couple hundred bucks for a few hours of classroom time and then take them out and let them move dirt around for a while for the frick of it. Do you think there’s enough people with money who have never stepped foot on a construction site that it would be profitable?
you better dont buy anything small and pathetic
https://diggerlandusa.com/
The insurance for something like that would be outrageous. The have old machine shows where old boomers show off restored excavators and bulldozers, and the public is not allowed to drive them, for that exact reason.
not him but I wouldn't expect the insurance to be a deal breaker on its own, it would likely be high but not impossibly so, although it might be hard to find an insurer willing to work with you because they don't tend to like new things they haven't got expected numbers for. Supervised, with a mandatory training course and a well laid out field that minimizes hazards it would be significantly safer than something like a motocross track or bull riding and you can just pay someone to try those out if you want so they must have been able to get insurance
I'm a little skeptical you could get enough people interested that are willing to pay enough to cover all the associated costs and insurance is definitely part of that, but probably not even the biggest one.
>not him but I wouldn't expect the insurance to be a deal breaker on its own,
How does insurance for this work? No really, do you have to pay some lump sum? A small fee for each customer? Monthly payment? How is it calculated?
You must know since you know its a deal breaker
Please learn to read, I said "not" a deal breaker on its own.
Do you really not know how business liability insurance works? Every single business that lets customers do shit, including just walk in the door, has some kind liability coverage on their policy for in case a shelf falls on someone or something. Which you generally pay for annually, in case you're a child and haven't even bought car insurance yet, but I suppose they must offer custom length policies for things like seasonal businesses. The cost scales with the associated risk, number of projected customers and income, number of employees, location, and how much coverage you need.
For comparison, the small outdoor paintball field I worked at around a decade ago spent around 3 grand a year for a policy with something like 2M in coverage, I don't know the exact numbers I just talked to the owner about it once.
Paintball fields have very high insurance premiums because kids are always getting hurt there and it was a pretty new business with no history so they were probably getting gouged a bit, but if a few grand a year makes your business completely unprofitable it wasn't going to survive anyway.
>The insurance for something like that would be outrageous
So just don't insure it. Simple as that. I swear people forget you can just *do* things without making it 100% legally airtight first.
>legally airtight
Insurance is not an evil judoreptilian plot to rob you of your money (for the most part). It's to cover your ass when something goes wrong.
Can pretty confidently say that if they have a beast like that priced that low, it has a laundry list of issues and you will probably spend far more repairing it. Heavy equipment is a very mature market. If a piece of equipment is X% below market, you can be pretty confident that means it needs X% in repairs to get it back up to spec.
Wrong
Why are you dumbfricks replying to this shit bait thread?
It's the best thread on this board right now
Your second selfie doesn't explain the first one.
Since we are on the topic heres a slew ring replacement video on an excavator
A major downside is once shit starts breaking/wearing out, it's too expensive as a hobby, unless you're a millionaire. Just replacing hydraulic hoses on something that big is going to be expensive - they're money pits, essentially, which is why they're cheap, because they're too expensive to keep running. So they auction them off to a sucker who will be lucky to get half of what they paid, to another sucker. There are machines like that sitting in fields all over the world, because of that, or being scrapped for their scrap value.
>hobby
What kind of hobby? Like, do you have any practical projects in mind that would require a machine like that?
excavator fight club
If they're only sold when they're losing money who's buying them? Surely people buying them aren't morons like op and are doing so for business purposes. Why buy what will lose money?
some places have different cost structures...
So maybe it's less about that they'll all together lose money, and more so that they won't make as much profit as a new machine? For example down time. May be more okay for a smaller operation where the overhead isn't as crazy as the guy selling it.
It's not bad, just expensive simply by virtue of being huge. Watch someone like Cutting Edge Engineering on youtube to get a taste of things to come, he often deals with big machinery parts repair. Just the raw stock material for repairing a single "barely working" cylinder can set you back several grand easy, and there's nothing important you can diy there without a huge workshop full of big and expensive machines (yes, even used). Well, maybe your cousin has one and will do the job for you for free? Everyone else will quote you the market price.
Btw half-assed repairs will keep destroying the rest of the machine and cost you more in the end.
yep, this is me
I have a big koi pond to dig in my back yard, this would be sweet.
?
Do you know how to fix it? Do you have tools to fix it? Do you have ten thousand sitting around for replacement hydraulic hoses?
If no to any of these, you'll never be able to use it.
cope
I'll never understand willingly pretending to be mentally moronic.
Spotted the leftwing troony
Did you see a mirror you onions-loving child predator?
>Why is buying a giant old used cheap barelyworking excavator bad?
Well, your alternative in your scenario is buying a brand new, functioning and probably warrantied machine that you can use to make money with less potential problems that'll be easier to transport. If you're considering buying used why not buy something equivalent to what you're looking at in the first place? You should be buying the machine based off of the jobs you're doing. Like if you're going to being digging out for drive ways or pools in residential areas would you rather have a tiny excavator that you can bring in on a regular trailer and can get into a backyard through a standard car gate or something that will probably need a 5th wheel or gooseneck trailer and might not even be small enough to fit into a yard(or if it does with turn it into a mudfield). Same if you were trying to get a job laying out a runway at an airport you wouldn't want to show up with something the size of a bobcat.
dilate
buy it just for the tracks. build a tank. or cool tractor
with coal going down in germany you could buy yourself a real excavator and not such toy shit
i present you Bagger 1294
Build 1978
weight 4986 tons
excavates 5708 m3 per hour
digs 114ft up and 101ft down.
https://www.leag.de/fileadmin/user_upload/materialverkaeufe/V19_044_10_Eimerketten-Schwenkbagger_Es3750__1294.pdf
Is there a PC simulator for that model?
I know Germans love that kind of PC games.
OP needs something with enough power to drive his moms dildo
Small and pathetic
The OP should start with a smaller machine just to wet his beak. There will always be bigger old machines for the taking.
Don't listen to all these no excavator having homosexuals op. I have seen this done before and it does work. Just make sure you don't pay more than the scrapyard would because that's who will be buying it next.
You need a license to operate this shit?
I've been running the one on my farm for years and never needed one.
On your own property, no. Farmers like you buy old shit all the time, and if it never leaves their land, nobody cares. For everything else, just driver's license, and in some applications you need a CDL, and for some specific niche uses, you need OSHA certification on job sites.
anyone built a mini excavator?
It's not that hard to assemble it tbh
no i mean built yourself
sure, but, first you need to invent the universe
stfu
save the trouble and buy a bunch of questionable realdolls instead
Dilate troony
You just use a pic off a used machinery site, you don't have a shot at buying that one cheap.