Looked at a couple wheel loaders today. One was a Volvo L330C and Komatsu WA320-5. Both have around 20K hours. Tread is about 50% and everything seems to work fine. A few small oil leaks on drivetrain components but nothing major. The Volvo was in a quarry most of it's life and last 5K hours have been on a farm to remove brush. Komatsu was used by a utility company building roads, etc... I personally like the Volvo since it has the larger 8.6 yard bucket so I can use it to mix dairy forage faster compared to the 3 yard on the Komatsu. Besides that I am not sure what it the better choice since both seem to work well. Is there any good and bad I should anticipate on either model or expect to break in the near future and cost the farm to repair?
What year are they.... I know nothing about Komatsu loaders. We had a 300 Komatsu excavator once, and it was very reliable. We have had Volvo loaders for years. The first one was a Michigan. Our oldest one right now is an 08. They are awesome to run as far a comfort. I find them hard on windshield wipers. The linkage gets worn, and the wiper starts dropping off the edge of the window. A 2013 L90 just had a new motor, and linkage changed, and it was about 1300 bucks. They are constantly flashing codes. Most can be ignored, but 2 have had injection system failures more than once. Just a sensor, but it can shut you down so you have to stop, shut down, and restart. Everyone finds them really good on fuel. In fact Volvo offered 15% better fuel consumption, in writing on their last purchase over a New Cat.
The Volvo L330C is a 1998 model and WA320 is a 2005. I am not too concerned about having all nice conveniences of the newer models (year 2000+). As long as it works fine to load light materials like dairy cattle feed is all that matters here. Seems like the newer models have a lot more sensors/electronics that than give problems when they fail. I also looked at a 97' L330C, 99' L220E and 2006 L220D. All had between 16K to 30K hours on the meter. I have not come across any Volvo's that had rebuilt engines as of yet and even saw some in the local papers with 30K to 50K hours. Seems like the ones with spade nose buckets with teeth had a lot more wear and abuse from possibly being used in rock quarry's. Many of the Komatu's with Cummins engines usually had been rebuilt around 10K hours. I suppose it depends on how they were maintained but the Volvo's seem to last a lot longer before having to rebuild something major like the engine or tranny. Just my quick observation from the few I have looked at thus far.
how many ton does the WA320-5 weigh?
You're kind of comparing an S-10 to a Semi tractor, don't ya think? Just my observation, but that pit loader will probably break you if it starts giving you trouble. They all cost, but the bigger the part, the bigger the bill. Plus, they don't work so good in less than ideal underfoot conditions. I would advise you to stick with something in that 320 range. Farmers and ranchers around here run machines like this (alphabetical order) Case 621, Cat 938/950, Deere 544/624, Komatsu WA320, Volvo L90/110.
About 12.5, or 25,000 lbs.
Shimmy1 is right about the bigger loaders costs in the long run. We have a 980Cat loader. One year the boss decided he wanted it to plow snow. The Cat service guy told him it wouldn't be worth it, as it was the type of machine that burns the same amount of fuel weather it is working in the quarry, or pushing a little bit of snow. He went out, and paid $12000 on a strait bucket for snow. It plowed twice, and loaded snow once. It cost them money to load snow, and I think it burned as much fuel as 3 L90s to plow. If you are only moving light material, what about a smaller loader with a chip bucket. An L90, or even a 966 with a chip bucket will do a pile of work.
It`s been a few years ince I worked around them, but here is what I remember. The fuel pump advance system that uses engie oil pressure is capable of locking up and it will shear the bolts on the pump drive. Your option is an enine change as it is part of the block casting as I recall. The other big headache are th bucket pins. They either were a straight pin and bushing or you could get the tapered pin with the split collars as Cat uses. The problem thy have is it uses a standard thrad bolt to hold the end caps to the pin and it needs constant tightening untill it all settles into place and is firmly seated on the taper. It seems like a better idea would be use a larger diameter fine thread bolt that could be torqued to a higer Ft/Lb. setting. The 220 was a good machine once all the updates got done on them. Never been around Komatsu, so no advice thre. Good luck with your choice.
I kind of figures those big machines would cost a lot to repair in the end eventually. Just spoke with a L330C owner and they stuck close to $150K in repairs into it in 49,000 hours since new in 1998. I was thinking I could get $10K in scrap metal off a L330 once something major went wrong with it and not loose too much since I see many of them sell in the $30-40K range with higher hours. I just hope I can get a couple years use oout of it before that happens since I only plan to put about 2000-2500 hours on it per year. The smaller loaders are hard to find with a 5 - 8 yard light material/chip bucket but I will keep looking. Some airports use them for snow removal and trade them in after they come off warranty. Most of them seem to have that larger bucket. I will try a new search for a smaller one like an L90/110 or WA320.