I am going to look at an excavator this week.. A Cat e120b. It be used for land clearing and house prep on my own property. I know it an older machine. It had 5k hours. I can attach a video. I realize this video does not show too much, but do you think its a machine worth having? What do you think would be a fair price? Its located only a few miles down the road which is why i'm interested.
That hour number cannot be guaranteed - just saying. Look at condition more than hours on meter. Biggest consideration should be spare parts availability and I have no idea what level of support there is for these dinosaurs.
Fair bit of slop in bucket linkage, tooth missing (shank exposed). Really need to see the machine in person. Look close for any play in slew bearing. 5000h….highly suspect, as Nige says go by machine condition. Could be a good acreage machine, depending on price… video really low resolution; hard to see details.
No. 1)They lifted the track and showed you it can rotate unloaded. 2)Never walked or turned it. 3) Never put the bucket in the ground and loaded the machine up. 4)Engine hunted like a bugger when the throttle was messed with. See items 1~3 above. They very carefully did nothing to load that thing. I bet it is pure ass when you do. Fixed thumb. Keep looking for a real thumb if clearing is your primary job.
All comes down to one thing..... price. Doesn't look like it would be a terrible property machine. Kinda hard to say one way or the other with the video. I gotta agree with skyking1 in having a hydraulic thumb is the way to go.
Yes clearing was right there in the first post. I can dig a little hole with a garden rake, but it is not the ideal tool. If you want to really clear, then get the right tool. I take it a step further and want a progressive thumb. Life's too short to deal with the frustration.
We had a progressive thumb on our Hitachi 120; sure was nice for grabbing brush piles while nearly fully “stretched out”…less machine repositioning.