Just out looking around and I run into this. Its a komatsu D85A12 s#19462.What year is it . What is it worth? I seen prices from 20 thou to 40 thou us dollars.It appears to have a cummins engine. My preliminary research leads me to believe that its a nh250.If the hour meter is correct it shows 0900.4 hrs.Is the last digit tenths. It is the white number thats in question.The machine is in good enough shape to believe the low numbers. What web sites do you go to for info on the komatsus.How hard are these to get parts for? And where do you get parts from.(north america).Going to go by the dealership today and see what is available new still.Was this a good machine , were the cummins motors in them reliable,is the power shift in them reliable and are parts available to fix them. Are manuals still available out there. Anybody here ever run these ? Were they nice to run and what problems if any did you run into?
With that serial number it is pre 1977 and most likely gray market. The engine is most likely an NH220 but I have seen them changed to NTC blocks and running up to 330 horsepower. If so this doesn't have much life left if any. They were a decent machine in their day. Not terribly fast or powerful but they lasted forever. Undercarriage was problem in that you couldn't get it around here. The gauge reading could not possibly be correct. No one buys that size of machine and lets it sit while still making payments. You can probably figure it has more than twenty thousand hours. What it's worth depends on its condition. Does it need undercarriage? Does it run? Does the transmission and drive train work? How much oil does it leak. Old Komatsu dozers are not worth much anyway as they are usually all worn out. The market does not think much of them either. Check out auction sales and asking prices on MachineryTrader.com. They have a fully searchable database that goes back a couple of years. Good Luck!
I have some time on a D85.It had the Cummins and was a pretty good machine to run and heavy enough get some work done.I ran it off and on for about a year and aside from being a little tired from a lot of hours it had no bad habits that I can remember.Ron G
I went to the local dealer and he said that all the major parts are still available for it.He said that they still listed parts for that serial# but it wasnt listed in any of his books. The books all stated that they only covered serial# that were imported into the US.I covered the purchase of brake bands steering clutchs Tranny rebuild parts Sprockets and a few other things. It has no major leaks that are visible and apparently it runs well. The undercarriage looks to be in excellent condition.I looked at machinery trader and the prices that I listed in the above post were from their site as well as others.
This is exactly what John C was talking about. This can be a MAJOR problem for you in dealing with ANY Japanese imported machine - not to be taken lightly. I advise you to do a search with the keywords "grey market" before you buy.
When I said they listed the parts for the machine they were for this serial# the only thing that he could not find for me from the serial # was the year of the machine.Apparently this machine is the same as the american imported machines. The dealer was firing off a fax to komatsu to try and get me a year on this machine.All parts for the 12 were listed as the same from the beginning of the # sequence, that included the overseas machines also.
What special tool is saying is that while you my be able to get an oil filter and a rear drive sprocket and stuff what your going to find out is that the little things are the stuff that you cant get. Examples are electrical items especially lens covers, gauges, key switch, maybe some critical mechanic parts that are not replaced often, but puts you down when they go. The other thing that will hapen is that if you need anything they will have to fax komatsu for anything that you need, which means anything that you need will take a day or two to just find the part number, remember the timzone difference. If your just going to use it for your own stuff go for it, but if your going to try to make money with it, I'd try to find someting that was a common machine in the us/canadian market. I'd rather have a d8h in the shop where anything i can think of is 24hrs away and most is on the shelf at my dealer. The parts my be salty, but thats better than a week of downtime trying to see if the parts even available.
There is a good chance that you can get aftermarket parts for that machine as well. We have supplied our customers with AM parts for komatsu for many years now. We can sometimes get OEM parts from overseas at a considerable savings over local dealers even with the freight. Part #'s are a must though. Good luck with it what ever you do. Steve. www.pdmechanical.com
Thanks steve I will put this in the memory bank.