Looking for advice on new excavator

Hey guys, looking for some help deciding which excavator to go with. Looking at either a 2014 cat 336e with between 1300 and 3300 hours or a new link belt 350x4. The cats are priced 235 and 190 respectively, and the link belt has 120 hours as a demo and is priced at 257. I have a 210LX and a 320e, both of which I am keeping. I have had a 2800 And 4300 link belt and liked them both. The 320 I have seems to rock a little compared to the 210.

We have a cat dealer 15 minutes away and link belt is an hour. It's hard for me to look at a used machine for those prices and see that I can buy a new link belt for not a tremendous amount more. A new cat was priced at 312 and that's definitely out of my price range. We have not had any luck finding a used link belt.

Has anyone had experience with one or both of these machines?

Thanks in advance!

We have a couple of Linkbelts, they seem like good machines so far.

Do y'all have any x4 machines?

The 336E for 1300 hours on the clock for $235K is a better deal than the 3300 hour machine for $190k. 2000 hours less for $45K more is a no brainer comparing those machines. That's buying 2K hours at $22.50 per hour compared to the 1300 hour machine at $59 per hour the original owner paid for those 1300 hours.

Locally we have been without a Linkbelt dealer for several years, recently I noticed a new LB dealer has set up a small shop with a few new excavators on the lot.

On the flip side since you own LB's and have experience with them $20K more for a new machine is hard to pass by as well.

I don't know about new link belts. I'm not a fan of them and have operated a couple of them. They seem tippie and kinda weak. The 336 we is very strong but it's kinda slow my opinion.

big sig said:

Do y'all have any x4 machines?

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cuttin edge said:

We have a couple of Linkbelts, they seem like good machines so far.

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No we have a couple 145x3 spin aces. Our larger machines are a 330 and a 350 Deere, a 485 and 350 Kobelco. We have an older 320 and it has been a great machine, but this will probably be the last summer for it as it has almost 18000 hrs on it.

Yeah I think I'm more interested in the lower houred cat vs the 350. We are going to be digging dirt that is mainly red clay. On our 4300 we had a 60" 2.75 yard bucket. As for buckets on the cat machines it looks like we were either a 60" 2.4 yard or 72" 3.08 yard. Will the machine handle the 72" bucket? And do y'all know if cat rates them as struck or heaped?

Depends on how hard the dirt is. I dig pits with a 72" 1.75 yd bucket on my 210C. As long as I'm not trying to dig into a rockpile, it handles it just fine. Can't imagine a 350 is going to complain a whole lot with a 3 yard bucket. Clintm is down in your area. He has a 350C. He might be able to give you some good info on bucket sizes.