Looking at getting a excavator for tree clearing and putting up a building. I really don’t know much about these. Owner says that all the hydraulic hoses will need to be replaced. Said engine was rebuilt years ago and it’s been in the family for 25 years used for digging ponds. Any information on this machine would be a great help thank you! He’s asking 8k for the machine located in two harbors Duluth MN found it on Craigslist. https://duluth.craigslist.org/hvo/d/duluth-case-drott-35-crawler-excavator/7205422245.html
Looks like it's gone. Drott I believe became part of CASE. I wouldn't buy one, but that's just me. An older Hitachi or Mitsubishi/CATabishi would be what I would look for maybe. Just depends on the size you're looking for and what your budget is.
Drott became a component of IHC, then shifted into the system and as such became Dresser then Dressta, Drott is long gong.
https://duluth.craigslist.org/hvo/d/knife-river-case-drott-excavator/7245128375.html She's a beauty! Are you in MN or AZ? big difference. No way I'd be looking at this either place, but if the add stays up long enough, you might get it reasonable, and it might work if you like to change hoses and then abandon the whole thing at some point.
That's a fine hoe! I personally wouldn't go close to it unless I could work it for a couple days for an hour or so at least, to get everything moving again and to see what problems come up, and expect that you're going to be fixing little things all the time for awhile. Sitting for 26 years is a long time. Replacing hoses if that's all it is isn't that bad. Even if the engine is good the thing might only be worth scrap. Pumps, drive motors even if direct replacement to a non ancient machine will likely cost more then that thing is worth. It has no parts value, nothing would be worth taking off to sell. Not to mention most likely no parts place will have any idea what the machine is and you'll spend a lot of time trying to find out if the parts fit. The other thing to consider is even if everything is decent, that thing ain't going to move dirt like even a 15-20 year old hoe will, it's going to be s l o w. I think unless it was only a few thousand bucks and I rarely needed it I would just go spend $20-30k getting something even 20 years old.
Good luck in finding final drives if they break.
They were a cheap machine to purchase and an easy machine to fix in "1978". Drott was a family owned company that built the cruise crane which seems to have started the rough terrain crane lines. They split off to the excavator lines and really made their name selling to counties that needed to maintain ditches and utilities with the rubber tire excavators. Their marketing advantage over back hoes was the longer reach and they could load directly into full size dump trucks. Law suits on the crane line pushed the family to sell the line off to Tenneco Corp in the mid seventies. Tenneco Corp also owned Case and Poclain at the time. That really wasn't a good fit as Tenneco was oriented to heavy industry, like ship building, nuclear power and oil fields. Case bought themselves out of that sometime in the eighties I believe and took the Drott line with them. I don't know how the Poclain line ended up but I know the dealer here tried to sell them alongside the Case machines for awhile. Drott was never part of Dresser. Case has formed other alliances since. I can't remember how all of them went but there was a time when all the big Case wheel loaders were rebadged Hyundai machines. There was an association with Fiat on mini excavators at one time as well. International Harvester sold the equipment line off to Dresser in the late eighties or early nineties. Dresser formed a joint partnership with Komatsu for about a year and then sold the entire line to Komatsu. The Drott machines were generally manually controlled Husco valves, Commercial Shearing gear hydraulic pumps and Drotts own gear drives for the swing and travel functions. Those were all standard gear trains with no planetaries anywhere. They might still be available through Badger Industries if they still exist. At this time all the Drott machines are dinosaurs that should have seen the scrapper years ago. The machine in the photo is a black hole that will eat lots of money before it ever moves a bucket full of dirt.
Drott invented the 4 in 1 bucket and made loader attachments for several brands. IH track loaders were the first with Drott 4 in 1 buckets. Case bought Drott in 1968.
8k is a lot for that condition. I just bought a 1980 40 CE in the NY hudson valley in much better shape for 6.2k
A step backwards. Ownership of that would be a liability. A clever way to find someone to haul it off the property. John C., Thanks for the history lesson.