Saw a drott 35 for sale locally and although i dont need another excavator it might be hard to pass up for the price. how strong are these old drotts? Just straight power wise? Would it be a good concrete demo machine mainly using a pulverizer on it, and for just grabbing pads of concrete and ripping them apart. Says owner rebuilt the main pump/supercharger/and most of the cylcinders. Here are a few pictures.
He did a nice job of cleaning it up and painting it. With the Jimmy motor it won't look as pretty after a few days.Parts for a machine that age and obsolete always makes it a gamble ,the way i see it. I see it has a large muffler so noise polluction might not be as big a problem as i was thinking first hand.Thats if it isn't rusted out some where you can't see it. If you can get bought for close to iron price then you wouldn't be out much i guess other then your time.I would run it before i bought it,check for parts places.Just one small part can put you out of commisson. Because of my past experience and age i'm Mister negative,so don't pay any attention to me.Good luck
We had a drott 40 for a while. It wasnt too bad. Wouldnt want to try to make any sort of grade with it, but as a breaker itd be ok.. As long as its Cheap.. Have to be close to iron prices.. That one looks pretty clean for iron prices. Weak part on them is the final drive to sprocket connection. Spline wears out fast and the sprockets were un available up here in Seattle. Had to mill our own.
I like the old Drott/Case machines. That machine is a B or D and has the 4-53 Detroit engine around 115 hp with a hyd system around 46 gpm x two on the later D series. They were a good machine at 1/2- 3/4 yard, fast for there time and would dig well. The issues like said splines stripping out in the sprockets, they have made changes on the shafts and sprockets with more meat in there. We would have the axles and sprockets keyed after they striped for spares, you would have to keep them paired as a matched set. The pillar block bearings also took a beating when not greased and caused stress in that area. The good thing I see is it has small track pads, the frames are pulled in which gives less stress to the sprockets compared to wide pads and the frames wide. I would check the three bolts that hold the swing box down and remove the pipe plug to check in that housing to check the gear lube in it and also check the final drive lube in each side. Also mark the big nut on each side of the track frame at the final shaft, start machine and with a helper watch the sprocket and nut while moving the tracks F/R easy, you can see how much movement/wear you have in the blocks and splines. We always kept a drive coupling in the machine for the final drive motor and swing box, they cost around $60.00 and would work on all three spots, they would strip out now and then, no big deal. The hyd hoses are 37 * and four wire on most of them that can be made up local. These are simple machines with no high tech devices, only big issue is the axle and sprocket splines more if needed.