Guys - looking at upgrading excavators from a 1978 Cat 235 to a 1994 Komatsu PC250L-6 with a hydraulic thumb. Guy says the rails are shot, says bushings are cracked. How big of job is it to change? What is a rough cost of parts? We can do mechanical work, have a large shop and have done a lot of motor overhauls and such so that doesn't scare me. He says it works great other than that and is still working you just don't want to track very far with it or very much. We are really in need of a hydraulic thumb for some jobs and to put one on the old Cat is not very cost effective (no auxiliary hyds). The Komatsu has 17K hours on it though, (however our old CAT has 22K hours).... is that to much? We won't put a lot of hours on in a year. We've had some issues with the old Cat and hydraulics and leaks and are still trying to figure out what's going on with it but as old of machine as it is and as many hours as it has I don't know how smart it is to put a whole bunch of money into it. What would a functioning Cat 235 be worth? Boom and bucket are good shape, pins a little sloppy will dig a deep hole pretty quick, most of the hydraulic issues/leaks are tracks and swivel leaking. Just looking for some opinions as I'm pretty new to big equipment. Thanks. Chris
Hi cheddarbob my thoughts contact aftermarket undercarrige dealer with s/n- get some qoutes. best to get complete u/c with hardware and track guides (may not be avaiblive aftermarket). also rebuild idler track guides some are bolt on wear bars usally worn past wear bars any ways lol. alot are like your 235 and welded to track frame with no bolt on wear bar. if you replace everything and have guides inplace youll get a long life from your undercarriage. without any broken hardware 30 hrs would be my guess if you hustle could be done in less. i dont have any experience with a pc250 but 18000 is a good amount but can also mean alot of major componets have been rebuilt and could be a great machine. if you do try and by machine i would want to test machine for atleast 2 hours hard digging and i would spend that much time visualy inspecting. good luck and if you up load pics and you might get feed back on pics