Hi everyone, One of our guys asked me about a hydraulic conversion for quick coupling buckets on a 2001 312c excavator. I really don't know where to start with it and what questions to ask. Plus I'd like to know how much it'd cost to redo it. Thanks in advance
The coupler is a stand alone piece that pins onto the end of the stick. There are two types you find in the Washington State area. Wedge couplers need special lugging on the buckets and the coupler has a wedge that locks the bucket in. These are falling out of favor in the last few years because of the wedges and the lugging on the buckets wearing out. The wedge couplers came in a manual variety where you used bolts to hold the wedge and hydraulic types where a cylinder pushed the wedge in tight. The second type is a pin grab coupler. You put the pins in the bucket and the coupler grabs the pins. The bucket lugging is not modified in anyway. The system is very good but you give up some curl force because of the increased length added by the coupler. The manual type wedge couplers as I recall ran around $3,500 to $5,000 just for the coupler and you have need to have new lugging installed on all your buckets. To add the hydraulic type in either wedge or pin grab you are likely looking at around $5,000 to $7,500 depending just for the hydraulics and then add for the coupler. I'm sure you can find better numbers by taking your time and looking around a bit. The two local suppliers used to be PSM and Highline Portofab. I believe there are a couple more now and there are plenty of companies in the US that sell couplers.
That was a very informative response, thank you for taking the time to type it out.