a picture of a retired wa800
Anyone ever notice how much the front end of a Komatsu WA800 resembles a Hough 580?
Hey Posthoorn. To me it looks like the loader is sitting by the road somewhere in Afghanistan. Typical for the region, the dust, lack of wheels, Japanese marks on the loader and such.. Where is the pictures taken?
Hello, i made the picture in dubai, ras al khamiah. the road u see is the road to a quarry. its the same area as where i made the picture of the pc1600
Many years ago, some friends of mine made a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and Iran where the outfit I was working for had some work. One was the Vice-President of Equipment for the outfit, and the other was a Senior Product Support Rep from Caterpillar. This was in 1974 by the way. They had a great time and took a ton of pictures, many of them of abandoned equipment (not ours) out in the deserts. They showed these pictures at a winter maintenance meeting in Scottsdale to about 50 of the companies equipment superintendents and we were surprised at the condition of some of the machines. The Cat rep explained that "quite often, the Arabs -- especially the Bedouin -- didn't have a lot of savvy regarding equipment." "When whatever it was they were running quit, they hopped off and went to get another one from the dealer." "Very often," he said, "all the machines needed was fuel, or, as sand was a real problem there, fuel or air filters." The machines were in perfect condition other then that. They didn't think there was a Arab mechanic in either kingdom with an ounce of know-how. Some Cat's didn't even have the paint worn off the dozer face. Several were buried in sand dunes, having been parked the night before and then covered in a storm overnight. "The Arabs didn't care," he said, "they just went off to buy another one." They noticed that several pairs of "turned" tracks -- for our dozers that had been returned from the Cat dealer there -- had the bushings in every imaginable position, except where they was supposed to be. They checked into this at the dealership, and found that the fella doing the work was a one-eyed old guy that didn't have a clue about what he was supposed to be doing. But he was turning bushings to beat the band and the service manager at the store was very proud of him. They checked into the engine and transmission rebuild departments while they were there and discovered that these were just open bays with a tin roof overhead. Sand everywhere! The dealerships in both countries were owned at the time by the royal families by the way. Well, after they got back, some spare components were quickly gathered up and shipped out of Houston to the jobsites. All rebuild work after that was shipped to Zeppelin in West Germany, and carefully guarded when it got back. They solved the track problem by stationing a company employee at the dealership where he watched the old guy on the track press closely and made sure he did our tracks properly. Other than that, they were treated like royalty while going out to jobsites and on hunting expeditions with one prince or another. Of course, the only way they could move around the countries was to be escorted at all times by members of the royal family, so it was more likely all the attention they got was simply shared or reflected from the prince that was with them at the moment. So, the sight of what looks to be fairly good equipment sitting abandoned in the desert or a quarry somewhere is no surprise. It likely IS good equipment with a simple problem from our viewpoint.
That's a huge machine. They must have used the same cab for all their loaders back then. That cab looks identical to the one on the wa180-1 I bought and sold a while back. The rest of the tractor is a different story though.
I guess there is so much money over there, repairing old machines aren't worth it. New and improved are the way to go. We have a wa 900 at work similiar year, with over 10k hours on it, and love it death. You can park my z71 full size in the bucket!
wa-800 A machine of that size is downright breath taking, and to think they would leave it on the side of the road for dead! i still revive loaders from the mid 70s to early 80s and consider them new for me! =)