Hello All very new about this type of eq. Looking at getting a used compact excavators,thinking of getting a takeuchi,from all the reading I;m doing Is it better to go with a rubber track than steel.What are the pros and cons remeber buying used thanks
Rubber tracks are great for the pavement as they are much easier on concrete finishes. In the bush, mud and rocks steel is the way to go. So when buying used, look out for big gashes on the rubber tracks. Cuts are okay but you don't want to see the steel core inside the rubber. On steel tracks, look out for sprocket wear and tensioner adjustment run out.
Also check your rails on the steel tracks. I've seen some pretty decent pads bolted to some absolutely worn out rails. I second BUSI's comments. Personally I'd rather error on the side of steel. I just really like how they work a lot better. Even if you don't think you'll need them when you're trying to push stuff, blade, or anything like that at least I've had better luck traction wise with the steel. Today for instance driving a Yanmar that's a nice enough machine, but there were many times I was spinning the tracks in the soft dirt as I backfilled and I wished those tracks were steel. Again really depends on what you're doing with it. The trick with the Steel ones is make sure they're in good shape, they're very expensive compared to rubber IIRC. And there are more wearable parts, pads, rollers, rails, sprockets, instead of just the sprockets rollers and the track itself, for the rubber ones. Also make sure to keep your steel tracks in adjustment, I have less experience with rubber so while I assume you have to watch the adjustment on them I would imagine that without the pins on each link that the rubber tracks probably would behave better than steel in the adjustment issue as they wear. But someone with more experience on rubber ones could tell you more about adjusting them. The trick with any tracked machine is pay close attention to the undercarriage. It's always a bad day when you have to put a track back on, etc. Keep an eye on it and you'll be happy, forget about it and it will be a long day....
Like said before it really depends on what you are doing with the machine. I have a 3ton with rubber tracks and with the work that I do I could never get away with steel tracks. Just traveling straight across a grass yard would destroy it, never mind turning. Alot of my non new construction work we have to be in and out as quietly and undisturbing as possible with steel tracks I would be re sodding every day.
For what its worth, (As I haven't had either fail yet.) with steel, you can replace one section if you have a failure. With rubber, if it has a catastrophic failure, you need to replace the entire thing.
Both steel and rubber have their place as has been mentioned. We do a lot of basement work so either would work equally well but we also do a lot of landscape with high end homes with beautiful surfaces (pavers, stamped concrete, curbs, etc) that steel tracks would mark, chip, do damage so we use rubber on our Kabota Mini. Easy of changing over is another plus fro rubber. We got about 2000 hrs for a set for what its worth. I just changed one the other day by myself, it took 11 minutes (one side), thats grease out, old one off, new one on. I didn't time the time it took to pump up the track again.
I'm with seabass I use rubber on my kubota as well. I figure I can go pretty much anywhere steel goes as long as im carefull and avoid big chunks of concrete and rebar everything else should be ok. Rubber tracks are just easier to use. I had a kubota 12k machine with steel and a new holland 8k machine and would always take the new holland just for ease of going down driveways over curbs and over sidewalks.