Hey All, I have a friend looking at purchasing a Cat EL240B series hoe. Serial number is: 5WG00471 It has new rails and sprockets, Quick change with 36" and 24" bucket 8800 hours and says it is dry and tight in the ad. Not much info I can find on it here on the forum. Had one comment that said this: Can any of you give some feedback on this machine? Planned use is around the farm, digging out stumps, building roads, perhaps 800-1000 hours of use over a couple years then sell. I'm a dozer and loader guy and don't get to work in the hoes very often. It seems big to me, but I'll defer to you experts! ..Jay
Good machines The El series were built by mitsubishi for cat to compete with all the other japanesse stuff flooding in in the early 1990's =sound machines though many of the cat dealers were a little stetchy on parts and service. There are lots of them still running around Britsih Columbia- so finning may be your best parts source.- there are lots of Grey market mits in the USA. Way better on fuel than the 225's of the day.
Can't comment on the 240 but I have had a 300 Mitsubishi and a el 120 cat both of which were good machines with very minimal down time and were great on fuel. Your Cat dealer should be able to get all parts but will complain about it don't know why never took long for them to find the right part just liked to complain. I would buy one again if in decent shape for the kind of work you described. I was always a little easer on them and had no major break downs and sold them for more than I paid after a few years but that was just hitting the market right.
Thank you 2005 - Hoping to find out more from the serial number too. Anyone have access to the lookup for it?
The machine is Canadian and you should have no problem getting parts. The electronics were the worst part on them as they are primitive compared to the rest of the industry at that time. Frames and other hard parts were as tough as any other manufacturer. They were a little rough to run but as fast as any other. I never heard of pumps blowing up much but there weren't very many up here in Washington. As I recall they used either Uchita or Kawasaki pumps just like the Sumitomo machines. They just had a different type of regular installed. The dealer wrenches in this area weren't very knowledgable on EL series because they only just got good on the latest versions of 225, 235 and 245 machines. The dealers on the west coast were trying to sell off their left over stock on the 200 series machines so pushed them over the EL series. The gray market machines got a foot hold that way and then the parts people got real aggravating to deal with.