Reuben
Senior Member
How much fuel per hour or 8 hr day would a ~350 size excavator , d6 dozer, (A35) truck burn?
My PC400-LC3 uses about 50 gallons per 8 hour day semi hard digging.
that's VERY economical! touch over 6 gals per her. my 690 deere, 210 hyundai, and 210 case all burn between 6-7 gals
Yes, I think I would figure one tank of fuel per machine per 12 hour day is safe. If you are really able to push them consider one tank per 8 hours.
Fuel consumption CANNOT be stated as a given as a general stated burn rate...I do not care what your salesman tells you about XYZ machine!!! While there are slight differences in the rated fuel burn per HP/ hour as rated by the engine manufacturer, it all comes to Load factor on the engine. For example. If you were to install a fuel flow meter on X engine on X excavator, truck, whatever..and STALL the Hydraulics or torque converter at max HP setting on any job selector switch, that is 100% load factor. Note, do not do this for more than a few minutes or a HUGE amount of heat will build up.
Now put the machine to work in whatever job you want and remeasure the fuel flow again. The difference between full load factor fuel flow and working fuel flow is the load factor. A good operator can run an excavator at around 80% load factor..BUT that means it cannot be waiting for trucks or setting pipe, which reduces the load factor and so fuel consumption. Operators alone can change production and fuel consumption in the same machine by up to 15%.
If you have enough trucks to keep the excavator CONSTANTLY running, you might hit 70-75% load factor. Spoil piling, as in cross country, could hit 80-85%. Waiting on trucks could lower the load factor down to 50-60% and the same with fuel comsumption.
Efficiency is how many cubic yard per gallon of fuel used. Bucket size now comes into play, as it might speed up the loading, depending upon material and digging conditions, but it will increase fuel consumption as the load factor rises to lift the heavy bucket.
Hope this helps.
I will now get off my soap box.
Wow a KOMATSU PC400-LC averages about 6 gallons an hour.
I have been told that 345Cs burn 7gal/hr on average,
dragline1 if you look even further up you'll see camaras pc400 uses 50 gallons in an 8 hour day of semi hard digging.
And your right though it would be more than that if it was production digging, but I was just illustrating the point of how bad Cats
are on fuel.