I am considering purchasing a CASE CX 135 with thumb and coupler. I currently have a 9020B with the 10' stick. Obviously I will be giving up some reach. I have spent a lot of time in a CX225 and I really liked that machine. I have no time in 135 and dont know anyone around here that has one. Any 135 owners on here that can give their thoughts on this machine?
I've never owned one but I did spend several months running one a couple years ago, I don't think your giving up much reach, but the cab doesn't have any room to keep your lunch in if I remember correctly. The one I was in had a pretty plain cab analogue controls no fancy LCD screens or anything like that. I remember it being decently powerful, smooth, and that little backfill blade sure was handy I levelled about a acre and a half with it. It even helped with anchoring the machine for ripping frost. Oh and it had good fuel consumption with that Isuzu motor in it. Hope that helped.
It does thanks, this machine does not have the backfill blade unfortunately.
We do not own either but they are nice machines and like 245dlc said above the cab is tight to say the least, we demoed one for a few weeks with a blade, thumb and QC with around 1200 hrs. and the only thing I remember about it that wasn't right was the slop in the swing(5-6 inches at full extension)... complained to the dealer and he said they were all like that ??? then the dealer installed a swing brake switch and said we wouldn't notice the play with the switch in??? needless to say we did not buy that machine, just that one little problem made it not the best choice for setting structures which is a good chunk of our work.
That's interesting I never noticed any slop in the swing on the machine I was running, it had been abused as the owner thought he was a demolition contractor, but most of that damage was cosmetic as well pins and bushings. Have either of you looked at the CX130B?
Hi 245dlc, We do a lot of work in tight places so we were really looking for a zero swing machine so the 130 really didn't get looked at. yeah the thing with the slop was kinda strange I think the dealer just thought he would try to gloss over the slop problem but with the work we do that would have been a safety concern and they didn't want to fix it other than putting in a five dollar switch which did not fix the problem anyway it just made it less safe.
Ok thanks, well that alternative to the Case machines is usually a Link Belt since it's the same machine just different paint,decals, and dealer. I've been thinking about an 80 or 130/5 size machine myself but I think I won't be able to do it for a couple more years.
I have looked at 130's but I would like to go zero tail. I know that the cabs are a little cramped compared to a conventional machine. It was the same with the 225. That machine was outstanding though, even with a thumb, coupler with a large bucket you could stick a full bucket out to full extension and the machine was still rock solid.
Yeah the 135 I ran was setup the same way a H&H quick coupler and ditching bucket, as well a thumb on top of it. I generally don't like thumbs because of the added weight and they're not a quick connect kind of thing, but with that machine it was still fairly stable. Same with a Cat 321D I ran one building dikes this past spring with a wedge coupler and a tilt bucket and it was pretty stable.