I am considering buying an excavator and have spent a lot of time in the past operating early Hitachi Excavators UH series to the EX series (around 100,000hrs seat time) with very little downtime. In resent years I have moved from digging dirt to land clearing so I have lost touch with what's happening in the excavator world except that the newer series of any brands are nowhere as reliable as the earlier models so I don't want to buy new.I have heard some bad stories of the Isuzu common rail engines. My current machine is running a JD engine which is the same as what Deere runs in the 130 and have had no problems considering how hard it works( 140hp version). I have always enjoyed operating Hitachi's in the past so am leaning that way but I would like to know the pros and cons owning and operating from others. P.S. Where I'm currently working there is only minimal service and no agents of any brands so will be pretty much on my own in that regard. Cheers Tones
Deere and Hitachi as far as I know are pretty identical. We don't really have deere excavators here in NZ (ive seen one). but we have alot of Hitachis though and they are still very reliable. You can still get 15,000+ hours of a ZX series with the right maintenance
Yeh Trent don't have them in OZ either so would be looking at getting one though if it's worthwhile. I know the Deere is a rebadged Hitachi but with a JD engine. A mate of mine had 5 Hitachi's all brought new and the engines cost him a truck load. He dumped the lot and got Doosan's.
Yeah the company I work at has a 90% doosan fleet but I only liked our 14 ton zero swing. Id still happily take Hitachi over doosan theyre just superior machines