I only have a Kubota dealer in my city, and their U55 is $27,000 more expensive than a ViO55 sold by a Yanmar dealer 300km away. Both are last year's stock models; the U55 has a cab, and the Yanmar has a canopy. The excavator wouldn't work in the snowy winter anyway. What's worse, I've fallen in love with the industrial design and styling of the Yanmar. It has a beautiful, simple, clean aesthetic. What should I do?
The Enclosed cab verse open canopy is a big deal money wise and resale. Does the Kubota have a hyd coupler included? I assume the Yanmar has it. If they were both equally equipped, I would probably go with the Yanmar. If you keep your options to these two as they are loaded. A cab is a big deal, even if you don't operate in the Winter. I wouldn't own a machine in Idaho without a cab, I certainly wouldn't own one in Canada. That would be me. I would compare the specs of the two machines. Yanmar typically has a lower breakout, I think due to the coupler but I can't confirm that. Don't base your entire decision on the aesthetics. Look at all the numbers and let that be a part of your decision process. If you got a price on a Yanmar 55 with a cab that might make the money more clear what your paying for. Demoing each of them would also help you chose which you prefer to run.
Welcome to the Forums SK! Glad to have you! At least to be apples to apples you need price similarly spec'd machines although $27K is a big difference in price between mini-ex's cab or no cab. On a side note I am assuming you are from Brisbane Canada and not Australia?
Yes, the configurations are the same except for the cab. The price difference is mainly because the Kubota's standard package doesn't include the thumb and hydraulic quick coupler, while the Yanmar has a more generous standard configuration. I'm a beginner with excavators; I just imagined that the canopy version should also work fine when clearing forests and digging foundations, I just imagined, haha
$27,000 is enough for me to buy a used Bobcat or a dozer. That is very attractive to me as I try to start a new business venture. Also, I've checked some forums regarding the reliability of Yanmar excavators. While it doesn't prove it's better than Kubota, the reliability is at least not worse
I have nothing bad to say about the 2 Yanmars I had at my previous employer. I had a Vio80-1a and a Vio55-6. Nicest feature was the factory pin grabber coupler. Servicability was good. Visibility was good. Yanmar sells the filters individually or, as a set. The set includes the motor oil.
I have worn out a few with just ROPS. It can be a nasty day in the cold. My tolerance has dropped off significantly but if you can keep warm doing basically nothing, you can do fine without a cab. I cannot, I have a condition called Reynauds, and sitting still in the cold my feet and fingers get about as numb as a block of wood. That is until it really starts to burn. I'm the guy dancing in place on the no-cab machines
People here have a pretty high cold tolerance. Even in early winter when it starts to snow and hits -3°C, you'll still see us building decks outdoors wearing just T-shirts and hoodies—though our 'toilet time' every morning definitely gets a lot longer. But by that time, it seems like all the excavators in the construction industry have already called it quits
Yes, having a quick coupler and a thumb as standard means I don't have to choose between cost and convenience. Optioning those on the Kubota costs a fortune. May I ask at how many hours your two Yanmar excavators first experienced a breakdown?
They never broke down. Unfortunately, my employer closed shop a while back. Broken fan belt on one at 2500ish hours (operator said it had been squealing for a month). The Vio55-6 would require a parked Regen every 6 months or so, but, inquiries showed that it had been idling 90% of the weeks prior. The only operating complaint (only from a few operators) was the vio55-6 had a 6 way dozer blade and it sticks out a little farther than a conventional blade. They went to auction in Feb '24.
For the Kubota- are you getting a quote directly from your dealer/ salesman or from the website? I know here the dealer quote is always different (lower) than the web.
Working in the woods or breaking out a foundation, with just a canopy sucks.
Yea, an open canopy can suck. If your jumping in and out of the machine a lot they are actually good for that, no door or cab to fight. Another open cab issue is keeping help around. You may be good freezing knowing you saved some money on an open cab. However with hired help, a guy can work for you in an open cab and freeze or he can work for the next guy and stay warm in an enclosed cab, in today's job market, those things matter.
Plus hornets. I’d y’all have hornets up there they’ll make you run fosho. Get the cab!
Both are good solid machine quality and durability wise. The Kubotas generally spec out a little better performance wise, especially digging and breakout force. I personally am not willing to give up the digging force for the Yanmar pin grabber style couple. Also make sure you aren't overlooking other features that are different between the two, angle blade vs straight, two auxiliary circuits vs one, etc. A cab is nice for working in the woods, gives you a little more protection from getting whipped with branches, falling/flying debris and so forth. If you do the build your own on the Kubota website, subtract about 13% from that and that's about the bottom dollar that most dealers can go (at least here in US).
The quotes provided are all discounted prices from the dealers
True, but sometimes people just have to compromise. I have never demolished a foundation before—will there be a lot of dust during the process
I am currently in the indoor renovation business and am just starting to acquire equipment to expand. For quite a while, it will likely be just me operating the machine. Looking at your website, I really admire your success in building such a mature earthmoving company
Haha, whenever I drive my canopy tractor into the woods, I’m wearing a motorcycle helmet and wrapped in my wife’s scarf
Yes, their other configurations are completely identical, both with 2 AUX lines. Since I work alone most of the time, I highly prefer the convenience that a hydraulic quick coupler brings. A U55 with a quick coupler might also lose around 15% of its digging force, which makes me lean more towards the Yanmar in this regard. What puzzles me is that in the US, you apparently get additional discounts if you customize the configuration on the official website? We don't even have a suggested retail price here anymore, let alone a discount.
That is not true, the MSRP is what it is. Discounts come in the form of cash rebates in lieu of financing (which vary depending on the model/sale going on) and beyond that its just good old fashion haggling. When I'm looking for a new piece of equipment I'll call every dealer within 100-150mi with what model/features I want to find the best price. Then I'll go to my local dealer and see what they can do, with Kubota my local dealer has always been pretty competitive. As for the hydraulic pin grabber on a mini excavator, IMHO unless you are doing some sort of real specialty work that requires switching buckets/attachments many times a day I think it comes down to pure laziness. Its not like changing buckets on a full size excavator that weigh thousands of pounds. Get off the machine, pull one pin or lever, swap buckets and go on your way. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I work by myself too and don't find it a burden at all to change a manual quick attach bucket. It wasn't that long ago that changing a bucket required a pair of snap ring pliers/wrenches, drift punch, hammer, grease gun, rags, and a lot of manhandling and swearing. A manual quick coupler is very easy by comparison...
I agree on the manual coupler. You likely won’t appreciate it unless like u say have had to change out one on a larger piece of Euipment especially by your lonesome lol it’s nearly impossible and will make you all but loose your mind. Had to change a bucket on an old terex loader that had no brakes middle of summer w gnats in my eyes and ears. Bet I got on and off that machine 100 times trying to line it up. Wow bad memories right there hehe. We’re definitely spoiled now days
It's not laziness it's productivity. The new 305 I bought in '24 has a hydro QC and I will not buy another mini without it. Like KSS stated above about the cab - my guys would much rather run the new 305 with Cab, A/C and a hydro QC than the old open cab 305 with manual coupler. If I can buy a piece of equipment that is more productive it makes more money. On the occasion that I actually get run it the hydro QC is quite sweet.
We bought a machine once (Yanmar Vio 27) without a cab...swore never again! Cab is worth every penny, and also (at least in our climate) much easier to resell. Keep in mind on a canopy machine the controls are out in the open getting rained/snowed on---freeze/thaw cycles.
Productivity but at what cost? Looking at the big picture, is the few seconds it saves changing buckets worth the reduced digging force and weird bucket geometry? To me it is not. The Kubota QC, Case Backhoe QC or even those awful TAG QC don't give up any digging performance. If there is some sort of new hydro QC other than a pin grabber I might change my mind.
No change in performance that I can tell between our '24 305 next gen with hydro QC and '18 305E with manual QC. Actually the '24 305 is much stronger and faster but I think that has to do with 6 years difference in age. Pic of the hydro QC on the '24 305. Basically the same footprint as the manual on the '18 305E. '18 305E manual QC Basically the same coupler, one is hydraulic and the other the ram is ratchet activated. Now we do run a plate tamp, hammer and an assortment of buckets on our mini's. Heck the plate tamp tamp and the hammer have been some of the most productive and profitable attachments I've bought.
Ok those are both pin grabber, just one is manual. If those two are the only options Cat offers then I guess either is better than no QC at all. I'm talking about the other styles of manual QC, Kubota, TAG, JD/Hitachi and so forth that don't move the bucket so far from the pivot point. I don't like pin grabber QC, to me it feels like the bucket is out on a stick, not pivoting on the main pin like it should be. Its also one more wear point to lead to a floppy bucket and makes the thumb unnecessarily large which gets in the way for deep straight wall digging operations.
I have a harford manual quick coupler. It’s very simple and doesn’t take away from the capacity or breakout force etc. my machine is plumed for hyd quick coupler but I opted to go with manual. It’s just so easy and lighter and I’m not constantly changing attatchments. I do have a hyd quick coupler on my 97-2 bota. I wouldn’t have it any other way on that. I use several differnt attatchments on it a lot more often.
No there is not another wear point as the bucket pins are held tight by the coupler. The thumb tines are longer to accommodate the coupler but it's not an issue for what we do. This setup works well for us, might not for others.
Thanks to my friend for all the valuable advice. I have a bold idea: since the situations where I might need extreme digging force are basically limited to digging tree roots, and I happen to have a friend skilled in welding, can I make my own narrow bucket or root rake with a shortened length (to reduce the leverage arm)? Would this allow me to keep the convenience of the hydraulic quick coupler while also increasing digging force? Also, if the Yanmar machine comes standard with a hydraulic quick coupler, can I choose not to use it and directly connect the bucket pins instead?
seams you in briys winters are not cold, more like most person on hears summer what Bt price for vi55
your in bris so never going to snow ,what Bt's price on Vio55,going to leave on site over night? if not get yanmar and spend 27k on some think else
In all honesty, since you are new to excavators and don't have many hours of seat time on different machines the difference in performance probably doesn't matter. Not trying to say that in a mean way, just you don't have a big database of past machines to compare to and you'll probably be happy with whatever you get. For me the pin grabber style QC is a big negative, but YMMV. I do believe the Kubota is the nicer, better performing machine of the two but you can't go wrong with any of the big Japanese mini-ex brands. If that's really the best deal you can get on the Kubota $27000 is a huge difference.
Exactly I wouldn’t go by the specs on paper. I bet in the real world there’s not enough performance difference to even notice it on similar size machines.
I would lean towards the Kubota, but that does seem a huge price difference. Can you negotiate a better price? We have also owned Yanmar and nothing bad to say about them... Our Kubota 040-4 was a powerful and fast digger for its size, very impressive. We had a pin grabber on our Cat 304, For our usage (hard digging into frost shattered bedrock) I didn't like the reduced breakout power at the bucket. Also the way the pins were 'grabbed' did result in a 'floppy' bucket. This was on a very low hour, unworn machine with a brand new bucket (pins). Perhaps there are other pin grabber setups that do not have that inherent 'play'. That said, for someone doing contracting, etc.. I can definitely see the advantage of quick bucket changes from the seat. It really does depend on how you are going to use the machine. All of our machines (up to 21 ton) have WBM style 2 bolt wedge couplers, no play whatsoever and I can change out a 1 yard dig to a 2 yard cleanup bucket in 2 minutes. I wouldn't worry too much about the style of coupler (unless you are doing a lot of really hard digging-or-need to change buckets multiple times per day)--focus more on the best machine for your use.
Interesting. Our 305E's manual pin-grabber QC has around 2K hours on it and it's as tight as it was new. The newer 305 with hydro pin-grabber has 852 hours on it with at least 100 of those hours running a hammer or plate tamp and it's still as tight as it was new. Of course that's not a ton of hours but 850 on a mini is around 3K on a bigger machine. When I bought our 325 next gen we kept the pin-grabber QC off the 325FL we traded. The 325FL had 4,100 hours on it and the 325 has 1,500 hours on it. Put the QC on the 325FL when it had 1,500 hours on it. So this pin-grabber has around 4,100 hours on it with a couple of 100 hours of hammer work on it. Again not a ton of hours but there is no slop.
Our 304 was the original series (not the CR); I wonder if there were changes made to the pin grabber design? It was a good machine...but did not have the powerful breakout forces of the newer series. It also had the valve bank under the cab floorboards! On a larger machine with some hours on it, like your 325 any slop sure would have showed up....
You should check out how these two hold up online. Pick the one that's known for being solid and reliable. Don't just go for looks. If it breaks down, it's not just the repair bill you have to worry about—it could seriously mess up your workflow.