Hi All, I'm currently shopping for a 20 metric ton excavator. The intended use is primarily for customer home site work where blasting rock will be required. I intend to use a crusher bucket and a hammer on this machine. I have been looking at the Deere 210G, the Cat 323FL, and the Komatsu PC 210-10. I have not spoken to anyone with first-hand knowledge of how well the machines work, and how much trouble, or lack of trouble, that the emission systems are presenting. I am definitely concerned about the new emission systems on these excavators. Can anyone please relay there experiences here in this thread? Thanks.
Why would you even think about buying new? Shop around for a low hour Tier 3 and run it for the next ten years until we see how the Tier 4 debacle plays out. YMMV, some limitations and exclusions may apply.
A few things, first being the PC210LC-10 is NOT a tier 4 final machine, its tier 4 interim. The Tier 4 final Komatsu excavators are the -11 series. Have run a few Komatsus and liked them, not as much as Case or Deere, but nonetheless not a bad machine. I personally think the new Cat hoes are overrated, have not run an F series, but did not like the E series at all. Deere is an amazing excavator, every deere hoe I've been on, I've loved. Smooth, powerful, and reliable. For this list, Deere would be my choice easily. But If your dealerships are good, I would look at Case/Link Belt (same thing) and Volvo. Both and amazing machines.
That's what I did. Didn't want to deal with the emissions systems of the new machines so I RPO'd a 2011 321DL in late 2013 with 1700 or so hours on the clock. Converted the rental to purchase and it now has over 3K on the clock and ticking along nicely. I want to let time pass on the new machines, emissions systems and the issue of supplying DEF fluid cleanly to the job and into the machine. My thinking is let everyone else figure out what works and doesn't and keep my Tier 3 equipment in good shape. So far so good. Just my philosophy at the moment, I'm old enough to be wary of the new crap mandated on the new machines through past experiences and young enough not to be able to stretch what I have the rest of my career.
CM1995, one of the things you mentioned was supplying clean DEF... I read an article where a contractor had DEF in a bulk tote and filled jugs with it.. got some sort of cross contamination and destroyed the catalyst one one engine. Replacing the catalyst unit and purging the DEF system as I recall cleared the $10K mark easily. Joy.
Lantraxco that's really my biggest issue with the DEF required machines, the methods and systems to insure cleanliness of the DEF delivered to the job site. It's hard enough to keep your diesel clean from tank to tank to machine much less DEF fluid. We fuel from slip tanks on pickups and occasionally the service truck on most of our jobs. On a bigger job I'll have a 500 gal tank on site. How to transport and distribute enough DEF cleanly to keep the machines running is the question. There is very little room left on our pickups, like everyone else, and I don't want to run our service truck on a daily basis either in order to get DEF to the job. I'll let others learn the "trial and error" and then read up on what works and what doesn't.
You may could find an interim tier 4 210g, those don't require the use of def fluid and are slightly simpler machines than the final tier IV
One word: Regeneration
I've ran all three. All had less than 2500 hours. Cat and Deere are both awesome machines. Pick the better dealer and go for it. Didn't like this 210 Komatsu at all which is strange because most Komatsu hoes I've ran were smooth and quite nice.